973.7L63 

BC86W 


B«Mt>lMl>MU;< 


WHY  WL  LOVE 
L  INC  OLN 

BX  •  J  AME  S  •  C  REELMAN 


Die  wjhen  I  ma:' 
H^an  t  it  saidofmeh 
those  w/yo  knew  me 
best ^   t/)at  [always 

:>I naked    a  thistle 

an  d  plan  te  d  a  Tlo  wer 

where  I  thoudht   a 

flo  wer  would  dro  W- '  ■ 

ABRAHAM    LINCOLN 


LINCOLN  ROOM 


UNIVERSITY  OF  ILLINOIS 
LIBRARY 


■■■ 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 


From  "The  Life  of  Abraham  Lincoln."     Cop.\  ritiht  190U.  The  Jk-Clure  Co. 

Lincoln  early  in  18G1.  This  is  supposed  to  be  the  first,  or  one 
of  the  first,  portraits  made  of  Lincoln  after  he  began  to  wear 
a  beard 


WHY    WE    LOVE 

LINCOLN 


BY 
JAMES    CREELMAN 

Author  of  "  On  the  Great  Highway  " 


"  As,  in  spite  of  some  rudeness,  republicanism  is  the  sole  hope 
of  a  sick  world,  so  Lincoln,  with  all  his  foibles,  is  the  greatest 
character  since  Christ." — John  Hay. 


NEW  YORK 

THE  OUTING  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 

MCMIX 


Copyright,  1909,  by 
THE  OUTING  PUBLISHING  CO. 


Copyright,  1908.  by 
THE  PEARSON   PUBLISHING  CO. 


AU  Rights  Reserved. 


^7 3.  7 lie 3        Ur.al 


MY  SON 

ASHMERE 

AND  TO  ALL  AMERICAN  BOYS 

YOUNG  OR  OLD 

I   ADDRESS   THIS   LITTLE   VOLUME 


Acknowledgements  are  due  to  the  excellent  books  on 
Lincoln  by  Herndon  and  Weik,  Hay  and  Nicolay. 
Ida  Tarbell,  Mr.  Lamon,  Mr.  Stoddard,  and  others. 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


Lincoln  early  in  1861 


Frontispiece 


FACING 
PAGE 


The  Kentucky  log  cabin  in  which  Lincoln  was  born     12 
Lincoln  debating  with  Douglas  in  1858 


The    Globe    Tavern,    Springfield,    where     Lincoln 
lived  ..... 


36 

Lincoln  in  1857  .  .  .  .  .  .48 

Senator  Stephen  A.  Douglas,  Lincoln's  great  rival   .      60 

Abraham  Lincoln  (in  about  1860)  .  .  .72 

A  rare  photograph  of  Lincoln  in  1860   .  .  .84 

Carpenter's  picture  of  Lincoln's  cabinet  .  .      98 

Fac-simile  of  Lincoln's  Letter  of  Acceptance  .  .    102 

Mrs.  Abraham  Lincoln        .....    108 

St.  Gauden's  statue,  Lincoln  Park,  Chicago    .  .    120 

Head  of  Lincoln,  by  Gutzon  Borglum    .  .  .132 

Life  mask  of  Lincoln  while  President      .  .  .    142 

Autograph  Copy  of  Lincoln's  speech  at  Gettysburg     148 

Lincoln  statue,  E.  Capitol   and   Thirteenth   Street, 

Washington         .  .  .  .  .  .154 

One  of  the  last  photographs  of  Lincoln  .  .166 


24 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 


WHY  WE    LOVE  LINCOLN 


WHILE  our  great  battleship  fleet 
thundered  peace  and  friendship 
to  the  world,  as  it  moved  from 
sea  to  sea,  stinging  pens  and  voices  in  one 
country  after  another  answered  that  Amer- 
ica had  suddenly  passed  from  blustering 
youth  to  cynical  old  age,  and  that  the  harm- 
less effrontery  of  our  nationality  in  the  past 
was  not  to  be  confounded  with  the  cold- 
brained,  organized,  money  -  worshipping 
greed  of  the  new  generation  of  Americans. 
Meanwhile,  in  all  parts  of  the  American 
continent,  preparations  were  being  made  to 
celebrate  the  one  hundredth  anniversary  of 
the  birth  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  the  hum- 
blest, simplest  and  plainest  of  our  national 
leaders,  whose  name  no  American  can  utter 
without  emotion. 

3 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

We  think  of  Washington  with  pride,  of 
Jefferson  and  Madison  with  intellectual 
reverence,  and  of  Jackson  and  Grant  with 
grateful  consciousness  of  their  strength. 

But  the  memory  of  Lincoln,  even  now, 
so  many  years  after  his  piteous  death,  stirs 
the  tenderest  love  of  the  nation,  thrills  it 
with  a  sense  of  intimate  relationship  to  his 
greatness  and  awakens  a  personal  affection 
in  the  average  American's  breast — not  a 
mere  political  enthusiasm,  but  a  peculiarly 
heartfelt  sentiment  that  has  no  parallel  in 
human  history. 

If  it  be  true  that  the  nation  has  at  once 
become  old,  that  it  has  grown  sinister  and 
corrupt,  that  it  cringes  before  material  suc- 
cess, stands  in  awe  of  multi-millionaires  and 
prostrates  itself  before  money,  why  is  it  that 
we  love  Lincoln.'^ 

If  in  the  pride  of  wealth  and  strength  we 
have  forgotten  our  early  republican  ideals 
of  simple  justice  and  manhood,  how  is  it 
that  the  movement  to  commemorate   the 

4 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

birth  of  this  lowly,  clumsy  backwoodsman 
and  frontier  lawyer  turned  President — a 
movement  begun  in  the  rich  cities  of  New 
York  and  Chicago — instantly  spread  to  the 
remotest  villages,  and  all  that  seemed  ugly 
and  haggard,  with  all  that  seemed  brave 
and  fair  and  true,  swarmed  together,  heart- 
naked,  to  make  that  twelfth  day  of  Feb- 
ruary an  unforgetable  event? 

Arches  and  statues;  flower-strewn  streets 
with  endless  processions;  moving  ceremo- 
nies in  thousands  of  schools  and  colleges; 
multitudes  kneeling  in  churches;  other  mul- 
titudes listening  to  orators;  warships  and 
fortresses  roaring  out  salutes. 

Yet  these  were  the  mere  externals  of  Lin- 
coln Day.  The  average  American  does  not 
shout  when  he  hears  Lincoln's  name.  Even 
the  political  demagogue,  the  stock  gambler, 
the  captain  of  industry,  aye,  the  sorriest 
scarecrow  of  a  yellow  journalist,  is  likely  to 
grow  silent  and  reverential  when  that  word 
is  spoken, 

5 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

With  all  our  national  levity,  we  do  not 
jest  about  Lincoln.  With  all  our  political 
divisions,  every  party  to-day  reveres  his 
memory  and  claims  his  spirit.  It  is  sober 
truth  to  say  that  he  struck  the  noblest,  high- 
est, holiest  note  in  the  inmost  native  soul  of 
the  American  people.  There  is  nothing. so 
arrogant  or  sodden  and  sordid  in  that  new 
paganism  which  has  set  its  altars  in  Wall 
Street  but  will  in  some  sense  uncover  and 
kneel  at  the  sound  of  his  name. 

Our  fleet,  in  its  voyage  around  the  world, 
found  no  record  of  such  a  man  in  any  of  the 
lands  of  its  visitations.  Each  nation,  each 
epoch,  each  race,  has  its  hero.  But  there  is 
none  like  Lincoln.  Alexander,  Caesar,  Na- 
poleon, Cromwell — how  cold  their  glory 
seems  to  his,  how  immeasurably  smaller 
their  place  in  the  affections  of  mankind.^ 

And,  while  America  was  getting  ready  to 
honor  Lincoln,  none  might  pretend  to  un- 
derstand his  people  who  had  not  first  dis- 
covered what  it  is  in  his  character  and  in 

6 


WHY  WE  LOVE   LINCOLN 

ours  that,  even  in  this  day  of  restless  com- 
mercialism, makes  us  love  him  above  com- 
parison in  the  story  of  the  world's  great 
men — love  him  for  his  poverty,  for  his 
simplicity,  for  his  humanity,  for  his  fidelity, 
for  his  justice,  for  his  plainness,  for  his  life 
and  for  his  death. 

By  sheer  force  of  character,  conscience- 
inspired,  Abraham  Lincoln  rose  from  ab- 
ject depths  of  squalid  environment  to  be- 
come the  most  august  figure  in  American 
history,  and  perhaps  the  most  significant 
and  lovable  personality  in  the  annals  of 
mankind. 

In  his  amazing  emergence  to  greatness 
from  poverty  and  ignorance  is  to  be  found  a 
supreme  demonstration  and  justification  of 
American  institutions. 

It  was  the  common  people  who  recognized 
the  nobility  and  majesty  in  this  singular 
man.  He  understood  that  always,  and, 
even  in  his  days  of  power,  when  great  bat- 
tles were  fought  at  a  nod  of  his  head,  and  a 

7 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

whisk  of  his  pen  set  a  whole  race  free,  it 
kept  him  humble. 

Perhaps  the  profoundly  tender  love  which 
the  American  people  have  for  his  memory  is 
to  be  explained  by  the  fact  that  in  the  secret 
recesses  where  every  man  communes  with 
the  highest,  bravest  and  most  unselfish  ele- 
ments of  his  own  nature,  the  average  Ameri- 
can is  an  Abraham  Lincoln  to  himself. 

The  power  to  recognize  is  not  so  far  re- 
moved from  the  power  to  be  recognized,  and 
it  is  thrillingly  significant,  after  all  these 
dreary  years  of  babble  about  the  omnipo- 
tence of  money,  that  the  same  people  who 
raised  Lincoln  from  penniless  obscurity  to 
his  place  of  power  and  martyrdom,  still 
cherish  his  name  and  example  with  a  depth 
of  devotion  that  increases  with  each  year  of 
national  growth,  confusing  and  confound- 
ing the  learned  foreign  critics  of  the  Repub- 
lic, who  miss  the  finest  thing  in  American 
civilization  when  they  fail  to  learn  why  we 
love  Lincoln. 

8 


II 

IF  Daniel  Boone,  the  mighty  hunter  and 
Indian  fighter,  had  not  roused  the  im- 
agination of  Virginians  and  Carohnians 
by  his  wonderful  and  romantic  deeds  in  the 
exploration  of  the  Kentucky  wilderness,  the 
grandfather  of  Abraham  Lincoln  would  not 
have  left  Rockingham  County,  Virginia, 
and  "entered"  seventeen  hundred  acres  of 
land  in  Kentucky,  where  he  was  presently 
slain  on  his  forest  farm  by  a  savage  in  the 
presence  of  his  three  sons. 

The  youngest  of  these  sons,  Thomas 
Lincoln,  was  the  father  of  the  future  Presi- 
dent of  the  United  States. 

In  spite  of  an  educated,  well-to-do  Ameri- 
can ancestry  of  pure  English  Quaker  stock 
— one  was  a  member  of  the  Boston  Tea 
Party ;  another  was  a  revolutionary  minute- 
man,  served  in  the  Continental  Congress 
and  was  Attorney  General  of  the  United 

9 


WHY  WE   LOVE  LINCOLN 

States  under  Jefferson — this  frontier  boy, 
who  was  only  six  years  old  when  his  father 
was  murdered  before  his  eyes,  grew  up  with- 
out education,  to  be  a  wandering  work  boy, 
who  gradually  picked  up  odd  jobs  of  car- 
pentering. 

He  became  a  powerfully  built,  square-set 
young  man,  somewhat  indolent  and  im- 
provident, who  occasionally  showed  his 
temper  and  courage  by  knocking  down  a 
frontier  rowdy. 

The  rough  young  carpenter  in  1806  mar- 
ried Nancy  Hanks,  a  niece  of  Joseph  Hanks, 
in  whose  shop  he  worked  at  his  trade. 
Nancy,  who  was  the  mother  of  Abraham 
Lincoln,  was  the  daughter  of  a  supposedly 
illiterate  and  superstitious  family,  but  she 
was  comely,  intelligent,  knew  how  to  read 
and  write  and  taught  her  husband  to  scrawl 
his  name. 

The  great  Lincoln  always  believed  that  he 
got  his  intellectual  powers  from  his  mother. 

For  a  time  this  pair,  who  were  to  bring 

10 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

forth  the  savior  of  America,  dwelt  in  a  log 
hut,  fourteen  feet  square,  at  Elizabethtown, 
Kentucky,  where  they  were  married.  Then 
a  daughter  was  born.  A  year  later  the  car- 
penter bought  a  small  farm  on  the  Big 
South  Fork  of  Nolin  Creek,  in  Hardin 
County. 

Here,  on  wretched  soil  overgrown  with 
stunted  brush,  Thomas  Lincoln  and  Nancy 
Hanks  lived  with  their  infant  daughter  in  a 
rude  log  cabin,  enduring  profound  poverty. 

It  was  in  this  mere  wooden  hutch,  which 
had  an  earth  floor,  one  door  and  one  win- 
dow, that  Abraham  Lincoln  was  born  on 
February  12th,  1809. 

What  American,  however  poor,  ignorant, 
unlettered  or  discouraged,  can  look  upon 
the  rude  timbers  of  the  home  which  shel- 
tered the  birth  of  the  greatest  man  of  the 
Western  Hemisphere  without  a  thrill  of 
hope  and  a  new  realization  of  the  opportu- 
nities that  are  co-eternal  with  conscience, 
courage  and  persistence? 

11 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

What  man  of  any  race  or  country  can 
stand  before  that  cabin  and  be  a  coward? 

Moses,  the  waif;  Peter,  the  fisherman; 
Mahomet,  the  shepherd;  Columbus,  the 
sailor  boy — each  age  has  its  separate  mes- 
sage of  the  humanity  of  God  and  the  di- 
vinity of  man. 

The  gray-eyed  boy  Lincoln  played  alone 
in  the  forest  near  Knob  Creek,  where  his 
father  had  secured  a  better  farm.  It  was  a 
solitary  and  cheerless  life  for  a  child.  Some- 
times he  sat  among  the  shavings  of  his 
father's  carpenter  shanty — a  silent,  lean 
little  boy,  with  long,  black  hair  and  grave, 
deep-set  eyes,  dressed  in  deerskin  breeches 
and  moccasins,  without  toys  and  almost 
without  companions. 

For  a  few  months  he  attended  log-cabin 
schools  with  his  sister  Sarah,  but  he  learned 
little  more  than  his  letters.  It  is  amazing 
to  think  that  this  man,  whose  Gettysburg 
address  is  accepted  as  one  of  the  noblest 
classics  of  English  literature,  did  not  have 

12 


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O 


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■A' 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

much  more  than  six  months  of  schoohng  in 
his  whole  Hfe. 

In  1816  Thomas  Lincoln  decided  to  move 
from  Kentucky  to  Indiana.  He  built  a  raft, 
loaded  it  with  a  kit  of  carpenter's  tools  and 
four  hundred  gallons  of  whiskey,  and,  de- 
pending on  his  rifle  for  food,  floated  down 
into  the  Ohio  River  in  search  of  a  new  home. 
Having  picked  out  a  place  in  the  Indiana 
forest,  he  walked  home  and,  with  a  borrowed 
wagon  and  two  horses,  he  took  his  wife  and 
children  into  the  wilderness,  actually  cutting 
a  way  through  the  woods  for  them. 

Near  Little  Pigeon  Creek  the  carpenter 
and  his  wife,  assisted  by  young  Abraham, 
now  seven  years  old,  built  a  shed  of  logs  and 
poles,  partly  open  to  the  weather,  and  here 
the  family  lived  for  a  year.  Meanwhile  a 
patch  of  land  was  cleared,  corn  was  planted, 
and  as  soon  as  a  log-cabin,  without  windows, 
could  be  built,  the  Lincolns  moved  into  it. 

The  forest  swarmed  with  game  and  the 
carpenter's   rifle   kept  his  family   supplied 

13 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

with  venison  and  deer  hides  for  clothing. 
They  relied  on  the  rifle  and  the  corn  patch 
for  life.  Little  Lincoln  "climbed  at  night 
to  his  bed  of  leaves  in  the  loft  by  a  ladder  of 
wooden  pins  driven  into  the  logs." 

Not  only  were  the  means  of  life  hard  to 
get,  but  it  was  a  malarial  country,  and  in 
1818  the  small  group  of  pioneers  who  came 
to  dwell  at  Pigeon  Creek  near  the  Lincolns 
were  attacked  by  a  pestilence  known  as  the 
milk-sickness. 

In  October  the  mother  of  Abraham  Lin- 
coln died.  Her  husband  sawed  a  coflSn  out 
of  the  forest  trees  and  buried  her  in  a  little 
clearing.  Several  months  later  a  wander- 
ing frontier  clergyman  preached  a  sermon 
over  her  lonely,  snow-covered  grave. 

No  wonder  the  countenance  of  the  great 
Emancipator  moved  all  who  beheld  it  by  its 
deep  melancholy.  He  knew  what  sorrow 
was  forty-five  years  before  he  paced  his 
oflSce  in  the  White  House  all  night,  with 
white  face  and  bowed  head,  sorrowing  over 

14 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

the  bloody  defeat  of  Chancellorsville,  won- 
dering: whether  he  was  to  be  the  last  Presi- 
dent  of  the  United  States,  and  praying  for 
the  victory  that  came  at  Gettysburg. 

All  that  year  the  sensitive  boy  grieved 
for  the  mother  who  had  gone  out  of  his  life ; 
but  in  time  his  father  went  back  to  Eliza- 
bethtown,  Kentucky,  where  he  married  the 
widow  of  the  town  jailer,  and  presently  a 
four-horse  wagon  creaked  up  to  the  door  of 
the  Lincoln  cabin  in  the  Indiana  forest,  with 
the  bride,  her  son  and  two  daughters,  and  a 
load  of  comfortable  household  goods,  in- 
cluding a  feather  bed  and  a  walnut  bureau, 
valued  at  fifty  dollars. 

Sarah  Bush  Lincoln,  the  stepmother  of 
Abraham  Lincoln,  was  a  woman  of  thrift 
and  energy,  tall,  straight,  fair,  and  a  kind- 
hearted  motherly  Christian.  The  American 
people  owe  a  debt  to  this  noble  matron  who 
did  so  much  to  influence  and  develop  the 
character  of  the  boy  who  was  yet  to  save  the 
nation  from  destruction. 

15 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

She  was  good  to  the  Lincoln  orphans 
whose  mother  lay  out  in  the  wild  forest 
grave.  She  gave  them  warm  clothes.  She 
threw  away  the  mat  of  corn  husks  and  leaves 
on  which  they  slept  and  replaced  it  with  a 
soft  feather  tick.  She  loved  little  Abe,  and 
the  lonely  boy  returned  her  kindness  and 
affection.  In  a  primitive  cabin,  set  in  the 
midst  of  a  savage  country,  she  created  that 
noblest  and  best  result  of  a  good  woman's 
heart  and  brain,  a  happy  home. 

Oh,  pale  woman  of  the  twentieth  century, 
sighing  for  a  mission  in  the  great  world's 
affairs !  Perhaps  there  may  be  a  suggestion 
for  you  in  the  simple  story  of  what  Sarah 
Bush  did  for  Abraham  Lincoln  and,  through 
him,  for  the  ages.  Did  not  the  two  malaria- 
racked  and  care-driven  mothers  who  lived 
in  the  rough-hewn  Lincoln  cabin  do  more 
to  influence  the  political  institutions  of  man- 
kind than  all  the  speeches  and  votes  of 
women  since  voting  was  first  invented  .^^ 


16 


Ill 

EVEN  at  the  age  of  ten  years  the  fron- 
tier lad  was  a  hard  worker.  When 
he  was  not  wielding  the  axe  in  the 
forest,  he  was  driving  the  horses,  threshing, 
ploughing,  assisting  his  father  as  a  carpen- 
ter. He  also  "hired  out"  to  the  neighbors 
as  ploughboy,  hostler,  water-carrier,  baby- 
minder  or  doer  of  odd  chores,  at  twenty- 
five  cents  a  day.  He  suddenly  began  to 
grow  tall,  and  there  was  no  stronger  youth 
in  the  community  than  the  lank,  loose- 
limbed  boy  in  deerskins,  linsey-woolsey, 
and  coonskin  cap,  who  could  make  an  axe 
bite  so  deep  into  a  tree. 

His  stepmother  sent  him  to  school  again 
for  several  months.  In  1826,  too,  he  walked 
nine  miles  a  day  to  attend  a  log-house 
school.  He  had  new  companions  at  home 
now,  a  stepbrother,  two  stepsisters,  and  his 
cousins,  John  and  Dennis  Hanks. 

17 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

As  young  Lincoln  grew  taller  his  skill  and 
strength  as  a  woodchopper  and  railsplitter, 
and  his  willingness  to  do  any  kind  of  work, 
however  drudging  or  menial — in  spite  of  a 
natural  meditative  indolence — made  him 
widely  known.  His  kindly,  helpful  dispo- 
sition and  simple  honesty  gave  him  a  dis- 
tinct popularity,  and  he  was  much  sought 
after  as  a  companion,  notwithstanding  his 
ungainly  figure  and  rough  ways. 

But  it  was  his  extraordinary  thirst  for 
knowledge,  his  efforts  to  raise  himself  out 
of  the  depths  of  ignorance,  that  showed  the 
inner  power  struggling  against  adverse  sur- 
roundings. 

He  grew  to  a  height  of  six  feet  and  four 
inches  by  the  time  he  was  seventeen  years 
old.  His  legs  and  arms  were  long,  his  hands 
and  feet  big,  and  his  skin  was  dry  and  yel- 
low. His  face  was  gaunt,  and  his  melan- 
choly gray  eyes  were  sunk  in  cavernous 
sockets  above  his  prominent  cheek  bones. 
A  girl  schoolmate  has  described  him:    "His 

18 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

shoes,  when  he  had  any,  were  low.  He 
wore  buckskin  breeches,  Knsey-woolsey  shirt, 
and  a  cap  made  of  the  skin  of  a  squirrel  or 
coon.  His  breeches  were  baggy  and  lacked 
by  several  inches  meeting  the  tops  of  his 
shoes,  thereby  exposing  his  shin-bone,  sharp, 
blue  and  narrow." 

This  is  the  real  Abraham  Lincoln,  who 
read,  and  read,  and  read;  whose  constant 
spells  of  brooding  abstraction,  eyes  fixed, 
dreaming  face,  gave  him  a  reputation  for 
laziness  among  some  of  his  shallow  fellows; 
who  would  crouch  down  in  the  forest  or  sit 
on  a  fence-rail  for  hours  to  study  a  book; 
who  would  lie  on  his  stomach  at  night  in 
front  of  the  fireplace  and,  having  no  paper 
or  slate,  would  write  and  cipher  with  char- 
coal on  the  wooden  shovel,  on  boards  and 
the  hewn  sides  of  logs,  shaving  them  clean 
when  he  wanted  to  write  again. 

Here  is  his  cousin's  picture  of  him  at  the 
age  of  fourteen: 

**When  Abe  and  I  returned  to  the  house 

19 


WHY   WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

from  work  he  would  go  to  the  cupboard, 
snatch  a  piece  of  corn  bread,  sit  down,  take 
a  book,  cock  his  legs  up  as  high  as  his  head, 
and  read.  We  grubbed,  plowed,  mowed 
and  worked  together  barefooted  in  the  field. 
Whenever  Abe  had  a  chance  in  the  field 
while  at  work,  or  at  the  house,  he  would 
stop  and  read." 

His  principal  books  were  an  arithmetic, 
the  Bible,  "iEsop's  Fables,"  *'Robinson 
Crusoe,"  Weems'  *'Life  of  Washington," 
*'The  Pilgrim's  Progress,"  and  a  history  of 
the  United  States.  He  became  the  best 
speller  and  penman  in  his  neighborhood. 
Yet  there  was  a  vein  of  waggery  in  him 
which  occasionally  found  a  vent  in  such 
written  verse  as  this: 

Abraham  Lincoln, 
His  hand  and  pen. 
He  will  be  good. 
But  God  knows  when. 

All  this  has  been  told  of  him  many  times 
and  in  many  ways;  yet  the  nation  he  saved 

20 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

loves  to  dwell  on  the  picture  of  the  tall, 
tanned,  awkward  woodchopper  and  farm 
drudge ;  gawky,  angular,  iron-muscled,  with 
bare  feet  or  moccasins,  deerhide  breeches 
and  coonskin  cap,  battling  out  in  the  forest 
against  his  own  ignorance  and,  by  sheer 
force  of  will  power,  conquering  knowledge 
and  commanding  destiny. 

Not  a  whimper  against  fate,  not  a  word 
against  youths  more  successful  than  him- 
self, no  complaint  of  the  hard  work  and 
coarse  food — simply  the  strivings  of  a  soul 
not  yet  conscious  of  its  own  greatness,  but 
already  superior  to  its  squalid  environments. 

It  is  probable  that  there  is  not  a  youth  in 
all  America  to-day,  however  poor,  ignorant, 
and  forlorn,  that  has  not  a  better  chance  to 
rise  in  life  than  Abraham  Lincoln  had  when 
he  started  to  climb  the  ladder  of  light  by 
courage   and   persistent   application. 

He  attended  spelling  matches,  log-roll- 
ings and  horse  races.  He  wrote  vulgar  and 
sometimes    silly    verse.     He    outraged    the 

21 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

farmers  who  employed  him  by  deHvering 
comic  addresses  and  buffoonery  in  the  form 
of  sermons  from  tree-stumps,  to  the  snicker- 
ing field  hands.  Sometimes  he  thrashed  a 
bully.  His  strength  was  tremendous.  No 
man  in  the  country  could  withstand  him.  It 
is  said  that  he  once  lifted  half  a  ton.  Yet  his 
temper  was  cool,  his  heart  gentle  and  gener- 
ous, and  back  of  his  singsongy,  rollicking, 
spraddlingyouth,  with  its  swinging  axe-blows, 
forest-prowlings,  and  coarse  humor,  there 
was  a  gravity,  dignity,  sanity,  fairness,  gener- 
osity and  deep,  straightout  eloquence  that 
made  him  a  power  in  that  small  community. 

Think  of  a  young  man  of  six  feet  and  four 
inches  in  coonskin  and  deerhide,  who  could 
sink  an  axe  deeper  into  a  tree  than  any  pio- 
neer in  that  heroic  region,  and  who  yet  had 
perseverance  enough  in  his  cabin  home  to 
read  **The  Revised  Statutes  of  Indiana" 
until  he  could  almost  repeat  them  by  heart! 

He  became  a  leader  and  could  gather  an 
audience  by  merely  mounting  a  stump  and 

22 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

waving  his  hands.  Nor  was  that  all.  He 
frequently  stopped  brawls  and  acted  as  um- 
pire between  disputants.  Another  side  of 
his  nature  was  displayed  when  he  found  the 
neighborhood  drunkard  freezing  by  the 
roadside,  carried  him  in  his  arms  to  the 
tavern  and  worked  over  him  for  hours. 

When  Lincoln's  sister  Sarah  married 
Aaron  Grigsby  in  1826,  the  seventeen-year- 
old  giant  composed  a  song  and  sang  it  at 
the    wedding.     Here    are    the    concluding 

verses : 

The  woman  was  not  taken 
From  Adam's  feet  we  see. 
So  he  must  not  abuse  her. 
The  meaning  seems  to  be. 

The  woman  was  not  taken 
From  Adam's  head  we  know. 
To  show  she  must  not  rule  him — 
'Tis  evidently  so. 

The  woman  she  was  taken 
From  under  Adam's  arm. 
So  she  must  be  protected 
From  injuries  and  harm. 

23 


WHY   WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 


Yet  that  dry  volume  of  "The  Revised 
Statutes  of  Indiana,"  through  which  the 
woodchopper  worked  so  bravely,  contained 
the  Declaration  of  Independence,  the  Con- 
stitution of  the  United  States  and  the  Ordi- 
nance of  1787,  and  he  bound  them  on  his 
heart  like  a  seal  and  wore  them  till  the  hour 
of  his  cruel  death. 

As  time  went  on  Lincoln  developed  into  a 
popular  story-teller  and  oracle  at  Jones'  gro- 
cery store  in  the  nearby  village  of  Gentry- 
ville.  His  oratory  grew  at  the  expense  of 
his  farm-work.  He  went  to  all  the  trials  in 
the  local  courts,  and  trudged  fifteen  miles  to 
Booneville  for  the  sake  of  hearing  a  lawsuit 
tried.  Between  times  he  wrote  an  essay  on 
the  American  Government  and  another  on 
temperance.  He  made  speeches,  he  gos- 
siped, he  argued  public  questions,  he  cracked 
jokes,  he  made  everybody  his  friend — some- 
times he  worked.  Already  he  was  an  Amer- 
ican politician,  although  he  did  not  know  it. 

It  is  hard  to  realize  that,  even  later  in  his 

24 


WHY   WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

career,  and  with  all  his  mighty  strength  and 
courage,  the  man  who  preserved  "govern- 
ment of  the  people,  for  the  people,  and  by 
the  people"  to  the  world  could  earn  only 
thirty-seven  cents  a  day,  and  that  he  had  "to 
split  four  hundred  rails  for  every  yard  of 
brown  jeans  dyed  with  white  walnut  bark 
that  would  be  necessary  to  make  him  a  pair 
of  trousers." 

When  he  was  President  of  the  United 
States  he  told  Secretary  Seward  the  story  of 
how  he  had  once  taken  two  men  and  their 
trunks  to  a  river  steamer  in  a  flatboat  built 
by  his  own  hands,  and  got  a  dollar  for  it. 

"In  these  days  it  seems  like  a  trifle  to 
me,"  he  added,  "but  it  was  a  most  impor- 
tant incident  in  my  life.  I  could  scarcely 
credit  that  I,  the  poor  boy,  had  earned  a 
dollar  in  less  than  a  day;  that  by  honest 
work  I  had  earned  a  dollar." 

In  1828  Mr.  Gentry,  of  Gentryville, 
loaded  a  flatboat  with  produce,  put  his  son 
in  charge  of  it  and  hired  Lincoln  for  eight 

25 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

dollars  a  month  and  board  to  work  the  bow 
oars  and  take  it  to  New  Orleans.  Near 
Baton  Rouge  the  young  men  tied  the  boat 
up  at  night  and  were  asleep  in  a  cabin  when 
they  were  awakened  to  find  a  gang  of  ne- 
groes attempting  to  plunder  the  cargo.  With 
a  club  Lincoln  knocked  several  of  the  ma- 
rauders into  the  river  and  chased  the  rest 
for  some  distance,  returning  bloody  but  vic- 
torious. The  boat  was  then  hurriedly  cut 
loose,  and  they  floated  on  all  night. 

That  voyage  was  Lincoln's  first  brief 
glimpse  of  the  great  world.  Till  then  he 
had  never  seen  a  large  city.  In  New  Or- 
leans he  was  yet  to  see  human  beings  bought 
and  sold,  and  hear  the  groans  that  were  af- 
terwards answered  by  the  thunders  of  the 
Civil  War. 


26 


IV 

Two  years  later  the  milk-sickness  which 
had  robbed  Lincoln  of  his  mother 
again  visited  the  Pigeon  Creek  set- 
tlers, and  his  father  decided  to  move  to 
Illinois,  where  rich  lands  were  to  be  had 
cheap.  Dennis  Hanks  and  Levi  Hall  ac- 
companied the  Lincoln  family. 

The  tall  young  woodchopper  had  just 
passed  his  twenty-first  birthday,  and  it  was 
he,  in  buckskin  breeches  and  coonskin  cap, 
who  goaded  on  the  oxen  hitched  to  the 
clumsy  w^agon  that  creaked  and  lurched 
through  the  March  mud  and  partly  frozen 
streams  on  that  terrible  two  weeks'  journey 
into  the  Sangamon  country  of  Illinois. 

He  said  good-bye  to  the  old  log-cabin.  It 
was  rude  and  mean,  but,  after  all,  it  Was  his 
home.     He  shook  hands  with  his  friends  in 

27 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

Gentryville.  He  took  a  last  look  at  the  un- 
marked grave  of  his  mother.  His  boyhood 
was  over. 

Before  setting  out  for  his  new  home,  Lin- 
coln spent  all  his  money,  more  than  thirty 
dollars,  in  buying  petty  merchandise,  knives, 
forks,  needles,  pins,  buttons,  thread  and 
other  things  that  might  appeal  to  house- 
wives. And  on  the  voyage  to  Illinois  the 
future  President  of  the  United  States  ped- 
dled his  little  wares  so  successfully  that  he 
doubled  his  money.  Thus  Abraham  Lin- 
coln entered  the  State  which  saw  him  rise 
to  greatness — woodchopper,  ox-driver,  ped- 
dler, pioneer. 

Even  in  that  rough,  heroic  pilgrimage,  the 
tender  heart  of  the  man  showed  itself  again 
and  again.  One  loves  to  remember  Lin- 
coln as  Mr.  Herndon,  his  law-partner,  has 
described  him,  pulling  off  his  shoes  and 
stockings  and  wading  a  stream  through 
broken  ice  to  save  a  pet  dog  left  whining  on 
the  other  side. 

28 


WHY   WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

"I  could  not  bear  to  abandon  even  a  dog," 
he  explained. 

Presently  the  emigrants  settled  on  a  bluff 
overlooking  the  Sangamon  River,  five  miles 
from  Decatur,  in  Macon  County.  All 
promptly  set  to  work.  A  clearing  was 
made,  trees  felled,  and  a  cabin  built.  Abra- 
ham and  his  cousin,  John  Hanks,  ploughed 
fifteen  acres  of  sod  and  split  rails  enough  to 
fence  the  space  in. 

Some  of  the  rails  split  by  Lincoln  at  that 
time  were  thirty  years  later  carried  into  the 
convention  which  nominated  him  for  Presi- 
dent. 

Having  reached  his  majority  and  seen  his 
father  and  family  safely  housed,  Lincoln 
started  out  to  shift  for  himself.  Among 
other  things,  he  split  three  thousand  rails 
for  a  Major  Warnick,  walking  three  miles  a 
day  to  his  work. 

Then  came  the  winter  of  "the  deep  snow," 
a  season  so  terrible  that  John  Hay  has  thus 
described  its  effects: 

29 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

*' Geese  and  chickens  were  caught  by  the 
feet  and  wings  and  frozen  to  the  wet  ground. 
A  drove  of  a  thousand  hogs,  which  were  be- 
ing driven  to  St.  Louis,  rushed  together  for 
warmth,  and  became  piled  in  a  great  heap. 
Those  inside  smothered  and  those  outside 
froze,  and  the  ghastly  pyramid  remained 
there  on  the  prairie  for  weeks;  the  drovers 
barely  escaped  with  their  lives.  Men  killed 
their  horses,  disemboweled  them,  and  crept 
into  the  cavities  of  their  bodies  to  escape  the 
murderous  wind." 

Lincoln  left  his  father's  house  empty- 
handed,  save  for  his  axe,  and  he  had  to  face 
that  blizzard  winter  as  best  he  could.  No 
man  or  woman  ever  heard  him  complain. 
In  all  his  after  years  he  looked  back  upon 
the  struggles  of  his  early  career  without  a 
word  of  self-pity.  Those  were  iron  days, 
but  they  were  not  without  romance,  and  life 
was  honest  and  strengthening. 

It  is  doubtful,  after  all,  whether  Lincoln's 
son,  who  became  rich,  dined  with  kings  and 

30 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

queens,  and  came  to  be  president  of  the  hun- 
dred-million-dollar Pullman  Company,  ever 
in  his  comfortable  and  successful  career 
once  felt  half  the  sense  of  life  in  its  deep- 
est, grandest  moods  that  thrilled  his  gaunt 
father  facing  that  fearful  winter. 

Let  the  discouraged  American,  whose 
heart  grows  faint  in  the  presence  of  "bad 
luck,"  think  of  that  rude  frontiersman,  to 
whom  hardship  brought  only  strength  and 
renewed  courage.  In  spite  of  everything, 
the  sources  of  a  man's  success  are  within 
him,  and  none  can  stay  him  but  himself. 
Lincoln  knew  famine,  and  cold,  and  wan- 
dering. But  he  did  not  pity  himself.  Axe  in 
hand,  he  confronted  his  fate  in  that  smitten 
country  with  as  great  a  soul  as  when  he 
faced  the  armed  Confederacy  and  saw  his 
country  riven  and  bleeding. 

In  the  spring  of  1831  Denton  Offut  hired 
Lincoln  to  go  with  him  on  a  boat,  with  a 
load  of  stock  and  provisions,  to  New  Or- 
leans, and,  after  many  adventures,  in  which 

31 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

his  strength  and  ingenuity  saved  boat  and 
cargo  several  times,  he  again  found  himself 
at  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi. 

Here  he  first  saw  the  hideous  side  of  sla- 
very. His  law-partner  thus  refers  to  one 
of  the  scenes  he  witnessed: 

"A  vigorous  and  comely  mulatto  girl  was 
being  sold.  She  underwent  a  thorough  ex- 
amination at  the  hands  of  the  bidders;  they 
pinched  her  flesh  and  made  her  trot  up  and 
down  the  room  like  a  horse.  .  .  .  Bid- 
ding his  companions  follow  him,  he  said, 
'By  God,  boys,  let's  get  away  from  this.  If 
ever  I  get  a  chance  to  hit  that  thing  I'll  hit 
it  hard.'" 

The  grandest  and  bloodiest  page  of  mod- 
ern history  is  a  record  of  how  Lincoln  ful- 
filled that  promise. 

That  very  summer  he  went  to  the  village 
of  New  Salem,  on  the  Sangamon  River — a 
village  that  has  long  since  vanished — and 
became  clerk  in  a  log-house  general  store 
opened  by  Offut,  who  was  a  restless  com- 

32 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

mercial  adventurer.  Lincoln  and  an  assis- 
tant slept  in  the  store. 

Here  the  tall  clerk  became  famous  for  his 
stories  and  homely  wit.  His  immense  stat- 
ure, his  strength,  his  humor  and  his  pene- 
trating logic  attracted  attention  at  once.  He 
talked  in  quaint,  waggish  parables,  but  he 
never  failed  to  reach  the  heart  or  brain. 

Offut's  store  grew  to  be  the  common 
meeting  place  of  the  frontiersmen,  and  long- 
legged,  droll,  kindly  Lincoln  developed  his 
natural  genius  for  story- telling  and  argu- 
ment. 

But  Offut  bragged  of  his  clerk's  strength. 
That  angered  the  rough,  rollicking  youths  of 
a  nearby  settlement  known  as  Clary's  Grove, 
who  picked  out  Jack  Armstrong,  their  leader 
and  a  veritable  giant,  to  "throw"  Lincoln. 
At  first  Lincoln  declined  the  challenge  on 
the  ground  that  he  did  not  like  "wooling  and 
pulling."  But,  although  his  inheritance  of 
Quaker  blood  inclined  him  to  avoid  violence, 
he  was  finally  taunted  into  the  struggle.     In 

33 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

the  presence  of  all  New  Salem  and  Clary's 
Grove  he  partly  stripped  his  two  hundred 
and  fourteen  pounds  of  muscle-ribbed  body 
and  conquered  the  bully  of  Sangamon 
County. 

After  that  exhibition  of  strength  and 
pluck,  Lincoln  was  the  hero  of  the  commu- 
nity. Braggarts  became  silent  in  his  pres- 
ence. A  ruflfian  swore  one  day  in  the  store 
before  a  woman.  Lincoln  bade  him  stop, 
but  he  continued  his  abuse.  "Well,  if  you 
must  be  whipped,"  said  the  clerk,  "I  sup- 
pose I  might  as  well  whip  you  as  any  man." 
And  he  did  it.     That  was  Lincoln. 

His  honesty  became  a  proverb.  It  is  said 
that,  having  overcharged  a  customer  six 
cents,  he  walked  three  miles  in  the  dark, 
after  the  store  was  closed,  to  give  back  the 
money.  By  mistake  he  sold  four  ounces  of 
tea  for  a  half-pound,  and  the  next  day 
trudged  to  the  customer's  cabin  with  the 
rest  of  the  tea. 

Just  when  Lincoln  became  a  conscious 

34 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

politician  no  man  can  say.  His  endless 
anecdotes  and  jokes,  his  winning  honesty 
and  good  nature,  his  readiness  to  accept  or 
stop  a  fight,  his  willingness  to  do  a  good 
turn  for  man,  woman  or  child,  and  his  open 
scorn  for  meanness,  cruelty  or  deceit,  were 
the  simple  overflowings  of  his  natural  char- 
acter. He  was  coarse  in  his  speech  and 
manners.  But  behind  the  joking  and  buf- 
foonery, the  primitive  man  in  him  was  true, 
gentle,  chivalrous.  His  tender-heartedness 
was  real.  His  kindliness  was  not  merely 
the  result  of  a  desire  to  catch  friends. 

He  once  illustrated  himself  by  quoting  an 
old  man  at  an  Indiana  church  meeting: 
"When  I  do  good  I  feel  good,  when  I  do 
bad  I  feel  bad,  and  that's  my  religion." 

But  in  New  Salem  it  soon  became  evi- 
dent that  Lincoln  was  not  satisfied  to  re- 
main a  clerk  in  a  general  store,  and  that  the 
strivings  of  leadership  were  in  him.  He 
borrowed  books.  He  asked  Menton  Gra- 
ham,   the    schoolmaster,    for    advice.     He 

35 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

read,  read,  read.  He  walked  many  miles  at 
night  to  speak  in  debating  clubs.  He 
trudged  twelve  miles  to  get  Kirkham's 
Grammar,  and  often  asked  his  assistant  in 
the  store  to  keep  watch  with  the  book  while 
he  said  the  lesson.  It  was  a  common  thing 
to  find  him  stretched  out  on  the  counter, 
head  on  a  roll  of  calicos,  grammar  in  hand. 
His  desire  to  master  language  became  a 
passion.  The  whole  village  *'took  notice." 
Even  the  cooper  would  keep  a  fire  of  shav- 
ings going  at  night  that  Lincoln  might  read. 

The  young  frontiersman  of  six-feet-four, 
who  could  outlift,  outwrestle  and  outrun  any 
man  in  Sagamon  County,  rising  from  an 
almost  hopeless  abyss  of  ignorance  and  pov- 
erty, was,  by  his  own  resolute  efforts,  acquir- 
ing the  power  that  made  him  the  hero  of 
civilization  and  the  savior  of  a  race. 

How  many  of  the  almost  seventeen  mil- 
lion children  who  receive  free  education  in 
the  public  schools  in  the  United  States,  and 
who  assemble  once  a  year  to  repeat  the  im- 

36 


f: 


o 

o 


V 


2 
> 

O 

O 
a; 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

perishable  sayings  of  Lincoln,  realize  how 
he  had  to  strain  and  struggle  for  the  knowl- 
edge which  is  offered  daily  to  them  as  a  gift? 

No  wonder  that  Lincoln  became  popular 
in  New  Salem,  and  that  when  the  little  Black 
Hawk  Indian  war  broke  out  he  was  elected 
captain  of  the  company  which  marched 
forth  from  the  village  in  April,  1831,  in 
buckskin  breeches  and  coon  caps,  with 
rifles,  powder  horns  and  blankets. 

It  was  in  that  picturesque  campaign  that 
Lincoln,  coming  with  his  company  to  a 
fence  gate  and  not  remembering  the  military 
word  of  command  necessary  to  get  his  com- 
pany in  order  through  such  a  narrow  space, 
instantly  showed  his  ingenuity  by  shouting, 
"This  company  is  dismissed  for  two  min- 
utes, when  it  will  fall  in  again  on  the  other 
side  of  the  gate." 

A  poor,  old  half -starved  Indian  crept  into 
Lincoln's  camp  for  shelter.  The  excited 
soldiers  insisted  on  killing  him.  But  Lin- 
coln stood  between  them  and  the  frightened 

37 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

fugitive.  At  the  risk  of  his  own  Hfe  he 
saved  the  Indian.  The  soul  of  chivalry  was 
in  him. 

He  had  no  chance  to  fight,  and  he  was 
compelled  to  wear  a  wooden  sword  for  two 
weeks  because  his  company  got  drunk — he 
who  afterwards  commanded  Grant,  Sher- 
man and  Sheridan — yet  he  returned  to  his 
village  a  hero  without  having  shed  blood, 
for  the  w^orld  honors  courage  and  patience 
even  in  those  who  fail  to  reach  the  firing 
line. 


38 


V 

AFTER  the  war  of  1812,  which  was 
/"^  fought  while  Lincoln  was  in  his 
rude  Kentucky  cradle,  the  conti- 
nental spirit  of  the  American  people  grad- 
ually rose  to  a  high  pitch,  which  was 
intensified  in  1823,  when  the  Monroe 
Doctrine  was  born  and  the  Holy  Alliance 
— not  to  say  all  Europe— was  warned  against 
armed  interference  with  even  the  humblest 
republic  of  the  Western  Hemisphere. 

A  new  sense  of  power  inspired  swagger- 
ing, bragging  American  politics.  So  the 
Greeks  bragged  when  Alexander  overthrew 
Persia;  so  Christendom  bragged  when 
Charles  Martel  smashed  the  Saracens  and 
made  possible  the  Empire  of  Charlemagne; 
so  the  British  bragged  after  Trafalgar  and 
Waterloo;  so  the  Puritans  bragged  when 
Cromwell  struck  off  the  head  of  King 
Charles. 

39 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

The  boastful  spirit  of  America  was  en- 
couraged by  spread-eagle  statesmen  in  blue 
coats,  brass  buttons  and  buff  waistcoats, 
who  spoke  as  though  history  began  at  Bun- 
ker Hill.  Andrew  Jackson,  whose  frontiers- 
men had  thrashed  the  trained  British  regi- 
ments at  New  Orleans,  had  succeeded  John 
Quincy  Adams,  the  polished  Harvard  pro- 
fessor, in  the  White  House.  It  was  a  time 
of  grand  talk.  The  People — with  a  capital 
P — puffed  out  their  unterrified  bosoms  and 
made  faces  at  the  miserable  rulers  of  Eu- 
rope. It  was  brave  and  honest,  this  strut- 
ting, defiant  democracy,  but  it  took  Charles 
Dickens  some  years  later  to  show  us  the 
ridiculous  side  of  it,  even  though  he  went 
too  far. 

**Do  you  suppose  I  am  such  a  d — d  fool 
"as  to  think  myself  fit  for  President  of  the 
United  States?  No,  sir!"  was  Jackson's 
estimate  of  himself  in  1823.  Yet  there  was 
the  rough  old  hero  in  Washington's  chair 
at  last. 

40 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

Hayne  had  talked  in  the  United  States 
Senate  of  nulHfying  the  nation's  laws  in 
South  Carolina,  and  Webster  had  thun- 
dered back  his  majestic  defence  of  the  indi- 
visible Union.  Then  South  Carolina  had 
attempted  nullification  and  threatened  se- 
cession, to  be  promptly  answered  by  Presi- 
dent Jackson  with  an  effective  promise  of 
cold  steel  and  powder,  and  a  gruff  hint  of 
the  hangman's  noose. 

Beyond  the  Allegheny  Mountains  were 
the  new  Western  States,  with  unpaved 
towns,  frantic  land  booms,  tall  talk,  and 
hero-hearted  men  in  coonskin  caps  pushing 
out  with  axes  and  rifles  into  the  unsettled 
national  territories. 

In  the  midst  of  this  half-organized  civili- 
zation Abraham  Lincoln  listened  to  the 
slowly  swelling  voices  of  conflict  that  came 
to  him  in  his  Illinois  village  from  the  East- 
ern and  Southern  States. 

The  great  scattered  West  longed  for 
means  of  transportation.    Railroads,  canals, 

41 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

steamboats !  They  meant  wealth  and  power 
to  the  pioneers  and  the  shrieking  specula- 
tors. The  Whigs  under  Henry  Clay  prom- 
ised to  raise  such  a  national  revenue  through 
a  high  protective  tariff  that  a  mighty  surplus 
of  money  could  be  divided  among  the  States 
to  carry  on  internal  improvements. 

Lincoln  was  a  Whig.  He  was  for  a  high 
tariff  and  internal  improvements.  Had  he 
not  personally  piloted  a  steamboat  from 
Cincinnati  between  the  crooked  and  over- 
grown banks  of  the  Sangamon  River,  and 
had  not  the  imagination  of  that  country 
taken  fire  as  the  vessel  reached  Springfield.'^ 
Railroads,  canals,  steamboats!  And  no  rec- 
ognition yet  of  the  issue  of  disunion  that 
was  to  shake  the  continent  and  drench  it 
with  blood. 

After  the  return  from  the  Black  Hawk 
war  Lincoln  offered  himself  as  a  candidate 
for  the  Legislature.  His  handbill,  ad- 
dressed to  the  voters,  dealt  mainly  with 
river  navigation,  railroads  and  usury. 

42 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

'*I  was  born  and  have  ever  remained  in 
the  most  humble  walks  of  life,"  he  wrote. 
"I  have  no  wealthy  or  popular  relatives  or 
friends  to  recommend  me." 

Lincoln  knew  that  public.  He  made  his 
first  speech  in  "a  mixed  jeans  coat,  claw- 
hammer style,  short  in  the  sleeves  and  bob- 
tail; flax  and  tow-linen  pantaloons,  and  a 
straw  hat."  First,  he  jumped  from  the  plat- 
form, caught  a  fighting  rowdy  by  the  neck 
and  trousers,  hurled  him  twelve  feet  away, 
remounted  the  platform,  threw  down  his 
hat,  and  made  his  historic  entrance  into 
American  politics  in  these  words: 

*' Fellow  citizens:  I  presume  you  all 
know  who  I  am.  I  am  humble  Abraham 
Lincoln.  I  have  been  solicited  by  many 
friends  to  become  a  candidate  for  the  Legis- 
lature. My  politics  are  shorl  and  sweet, 
like  the  old  woman's  dance.  I  am  in  favor 
of  a  national  bank.  I  am  in  favor  of  the 
internal  improvement  system  and  a  high 
protective  tariff.     These  are  my  sentiments 

43 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

and  political  principles.  If  elected  I  shall 
be  thankful;  if  not,  it  will  be  all  the  same." 

There  is  the  Lincoln  we  love — simple, 
genuine,  direct!  He  seemed  to  feel  to  the 
day  of  his  death  that  the  public  was  not 
some  distant  abstraction,  to  be  approached 
fearfully  and  crawlingly;  but  men  like  him- 
self, with  the  same  feelings  and  aspirations. 
It  was  because  Lincoln  hated  shams  and 
sneaks,  and  had  the  root  of  kindly  honor  in 
his  nature,  and  because  he  saw,  at  the  very 
bottom,  all  men  more  or  less  the  same,  that 
he  reached  the  average  American  heart  as 
no  one  has  reached  it  before  or  since.  He 
was  humble  enoughs— and  humility  is  an 
inevitable  result  of  moral  and  spiritual  intel- 
ligence— to  believe  that  the  honesty  he  felt 
in  himself  stirred  an  equal  honesty  in  others 
about  him. 

He  was  defeated  in  the  election,  but  that 
was  the  only  time  the  people  rejected  him. 

Failure  did  not  sour  Lincoln.  He  took 
odd   jobs   about   the   village — Offutt's  had 

44 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

"petered  out" — and  for  a  time  he  consid- 
ered the  blacksmith's  trade.  But  presently 
he  became  a  partner  in  a  general  store  with 
an  idle  fellow  named  Berry,  giving  his  note 
in  payment  of  his  share.  He  and  his  part- 
ner bought  out  still  another  unsuccessful 
store,  paying  for  it  with  their  notes.  The 
end  of  it  all  was  that  their  business  failed 
and  liincoln  had  to  shoulder  a  debt  that 
made  him  stagger  for  many  years. 

He  was  not  a  good  merchant.  His  fond- 
ness for  study  made  him  neglect  his  store. 
Having  secured  copies  of  Blackstone  and 
Chitty  he  spent  his  days  and  nights  studying 
law.  He  would  go  to  the  great  oak  just 
outside  of  the  door,  lie  on  his  back  with  his 
feet  against  the  tree,  and  lose  himself  in 
Blackstone  for  hours. 

The  store  was  a  failure,  and  Lincoln  went 
back  to  rail  splitting  and  farm  work.  But  his 
law  books  were  always  with  him.  No  hard- 
ship, no  disappointment,  could  persuade  him 
to  give  up  his  pursuit  of  knowledge. 

45 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

In  1833  he  became  postmaster  of  New 
Salem,  often  carrying  the  scanty  mail  about 
in  his  hat  and  reading  the  newspapers  be- 
fore he  delivered  them. 

Meanwhile  John  Calhoun,  the  Surveyor 
of  Sangamon  County,  wanted  an  assistant, 
and  he  appointed  the  tall,  story-telling,  like- 
able postmaster  to  the  place.  Lincoln  knew 
nothing  of  surveying,  but  in  six  weeks  he  got 
enough  out  of  books  to  fit  him  for  the  work. 
His  survey  maps  are  still  models  of  accuracy 
and  intelligence. 

Once  more  he  was  a  candidate  for  the 
Legislature,  in  1834.  This  time  he  was 
elected.  He  had  to  borrow  money  to  buy 
clothes  in  which  to  make  his  legislative 
appearance. 


46 


VI 

A  ND  now  came  the  first  great  romance 
/%^  of  Lincoln's  life.  He  fell  in  love 
with  pretty,  auburn-haired  Anne 
Rutledge,  daughter  of  the  owner  of  the 
tavern  in  which  he  lived.  His  passion 
seemed  hopeless,  for  the  slender  maid  of 
seventeen  was  pledged  to  a  young  man 
from  New  York.  Yet  Lincoln  loved  and 
waited  and  hoped.  His  studies  had  worn 
him  to  emaciation.  His  ill-fitting  clothes 
hung  loose  on  his  ungainly  figure.  His 
face  was  thin  and  his  eyes  sunken.  He 
was  poor,  and  a  mere  clodhopper.  Still  he 
loved  sweet  little  Anne  Rutledge,  even 
though  all  the  village  knew  she  was  anoth- 
er's, and  that  love  burned  in  him  always. 

When  her  lover  went  aw^ay,  promising  to 
return,  Lincoln  was  her  watchful  knight, 
serving  and  hoping.  But  the  New  Yorker 
did  not  come  back.     Anne  Rutledge  grew 

47 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

pale  with  waiting.  It  was  evident  that  she 
was  deserted.     All  New  Salem  knew  it. 

Then  Lincoln  offered  her  his  heart  and 
she  consented,  asking  only  time  enough  to 
write  to  her  lost  lover.  No  answer  to  the 
letter  came.  Week  after  week  passed.  And 
then  Lincoln  was  accepted.  But,  alas,  the 
strain  had  been  too  great,  and  the  aban- 
doned young  beauty  grew  mortally  ill.  On 
her  deathbed  she  called  for  Lincoln  con- 
tinually, and  when  he  came  they  left  him 
alone  with  her  for  farewell.  Afterwards  he 
went  to  her  grave  and  wept  like  a  child. 
*'My  heart  lies  buried  there,"  he  said. 

Poor,  honest,  ugly  Lincoln!  That  trag- 
edy saddened  his  life,  and  years  afterwards 
he  could  not  refer  to  Anne  Rutledge  with- 
out tears.  So  terrible  was  the  effect  of  her 
death  upon  him  that  for  a  time  his  friends 
feared  for  his  reason.  He  would  wander  in 
the  woods  a  victim  to  despair.  To  a  com- 
panion who  urged  him  to  forget  his  loss  he 
groaned,  "I  cannot;  the  thought  of  the  snow 

48 


Lincoln  in  1857 


WHY   WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

and  rain  on  her  grave  fills  me  with  inde- 
scribable grief."  Finally,  he  was  taken  to 
a  friend's  house  and  there  watched  and  com- 
forted through  days  of  deep  torment,  bor- 
dering on  madness,  till  he  could  bear  to  go 
out  again  among  men. 

Lincoln  went  to  the  Legislature  at  Van- 
dalia  in  a  coarse  suit  of  jeans,  but  most  of 
the  Illinois  lawmakers  wore  jeans  and  coon- 
skin  caps.  It  cannot  be  honestly  said  that 
he  was  a  brilliant  or  important  lawmaker, 
although  his  great  height,  immense  strength, 
quaint,  sharp  wit  and  never-failing  stories 
made  him  a  popular  figure  at  the  State 
capital. 

His  mind  was  too  much  occupied  with  the 
study  of  the  law.  He  had  resumed  an  ac- 
quaintance, formed  during  the  Black  Hawk 
war,  with  Major  John  T.  Stuart,  who  en- 
couraged him  to  become  a  lawyer,  and 
loaned  him  books.  Curiously  enough  he 
seemed  to  desire  no  teacher,  but  followed 
his  course  of  studies  alone.     Self-reliance 

49 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

was  his  strongest  trait,  self-reliance  and  end- 
less work. 

Those  who  attempt  to  account  for  Lin- 
coln's remarkable  rise  in  life  are  apt  to  over- 
look the  terrific  mental  grind  to  which  he 
subjected  himself  for  so  many  years;  and, 
as  we  value  most  that  which  we  get  through 
stress  and  sacrifice  and  pain,  so  the  things 
which  Lincoln  dug  out  of  his  books  were 
never  forgotten. 

Perhaps,  in  these  easy  days,  when  educa- 
tion is  pressed  upon  all,  there  is  a  lesson  to 
be  found  in  the  story  of  this  man  who  laid 
firm  foundations  for  his  after  life  of  great- 
ness by  taking  upon  himself  the  whole  re- 
sponsibility for  searching  after  sound  knowl- 
edge and  principles. 

Lincoln  became  Major  Stuart's  law-part- 
ner, and  for  many  years  he  alternated  be- 
tween petty  lawsuits  and  his  more  profitable 
work  as  a  surveyor.  His  sincerity,  shrewd 
humor,  fairness  and  hearty  hand-shaking 
qualities  drew  friends  to  him  wherever  he 

50 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

went.  His  long,  almost  ludicrous  figure, 
with  its  trousers  short  of  the  shoetops  by 
several  inches;  his  stooping  shoulders  and 
shriveled,  sunken,  melancholy  face,  were 
not  associated  with  the  distinction,  romance 
and  tragic  dignity  which  history  has  given 
to  all  that  belongs  to  him.  But  his  very 
spraddling  awkwardness,  the  picturesque 
vernacular  in  which  he  told  his  countryside 
parables,  coarse  and  satirical  though  they 
sometimes  were ;  the  humble  spirit  in  which 
the  lawyer-surveyor-politician  would  do  odd 
jobs  or  chores  to  help  a  neighbor  or  earn  a 
dollar,  gave  him  added  political  strength 
with  a  frontier  people  who  loved  plain  men. 
He  does  not  understand  Lincoln  who 
thinks  of  him  as  a  guileless,  innocent  fron- 
tiersman, raised  by  accident  from  a  log- 
cabin  to  direct  a  mighty  war  and  shape  the 
policy  of  a  nation.  He  was  a  sagacious, 
observant,  natural  politician,  ambitious  but 
honest.  His  law-partner,  Mr.  Herndon,  has 
made  that  plain.     Horace  White,  who  knew 

51 


'"'^^^'ry,. 


"'"''^^^s^.. 


WHY  WE  LOVE  LINCOLN 

Lincoln  in  his  days  of  political  campaigning, 
has  written  of  him: 

*'He  was  as  ambitious  of  earthly  honors 
as  any  man  of  his  time.  Furthermore,  he 
was  an  adept  at  log-rolling  or  any  political 
game  that  did  not  involve  falsity.  .  .  . 
Nobody  knew  better  how  to  turn  things  to 
advantage  politically,  and  nobody  w^as  read- 
ier to  take  such  advantage,  provided  it  did 
not  involve  dishonorable  means.  He  could 
not  cheat  the  people  out  of  their  votes  any 
more  than  out  of  their  money.  The  Abra- 
ham Lincoln  that  some  people  have  pic- 
tured to  themselves,  sitting  in  his  dingy  law 
office,  working  over  his  cases  till  the  voice 
of  duty  roused  him,  never  existed.  If  this 
had  been  his  type  he  never  would  have  been 
called  at  all." 

It  helps  one  to  realize  the  man  who  after- 
wards roused  the  soul  of  the  Republic  to 
resist  the  degradation  of  slavery  and  the 
shock  of  war  to  read  what  he  wrote  from 
Washington  to  Mr.  Herndon  in  1848; 

52 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

*'Now,  as  to  the  young  men,  you  must 
not  wait  to  be  brought  forward  by  the  older 
men.  For  instance,  do  you  suppose  that  I 
should  ever  have  got  into  notice  if  I  had 
waited  to  be  hunted  up  and  pushed  forward 
by  older  men?  You  young  men  get  to- 
gether and  form  a  Rough  and  Ready  club, 
and  have  regular  meetings  and  speeches. 
Take  in  everybody  that  you  can  get.  .  . 
As  you  go  along,  gather  up  the  shrewd, 
wild  boys  about  town,  whether  just  of  age 
or  just  a  little  under.  Let  every  one  play 
the  part  he  can  play  best — some  speak,  some 
sing,  and  all  halloo." 

And  in  1836  we  catch  sight  of  Lincoln, 
again  a  candidate  for  the  Legislature,  leap- 
ing forward,  with  flashing  eyes  to  answer  a 
taunt  of  a  Mr.  Forquer,  who  had  a  lightning 
rod  on  his  new  house,  and  had  just  left  the 
,Whig  party  for  a  place  in  the  Land  Office: 
*'I  desire  to  live,  and  I  desire  place  and  dis- 
tinction; but  I  would  rather  die  now  than, 
like  the  gentleman,  live  to  see  the  day  that 

53 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

I  would  change  my  politics  for  an  office 
worth  three  thousand  dollars  a  year,  and 
then  feel  compelled  to  erect  a  lightning  rod 
to  protect  a  guilty  conscience  from  an 
offended  God." 

Yes,  Lincoln  was  a  politician  who  could 
seize  your  attention  by  the  very  witchery  of 
his  grotesque  personality,  twist  his  opponent 
into  helplessness  by  the  stinging  shrewdness 
of  a  humorous  story,  make  you  laugh  or 
cry  alternately,  reach  down  into  your  hu- 
manity by  some  frank  confession  of  his  pov- 
erty and  rough  beginnings,  and  then  sud- 
denly stir  the  highest  instincts  of  your  nature 
by  a  sublime  moral  appeal. 

It  is  true  that  in  his  second  term  in  the 
Legislature  he  voted  for  all  manner  of  ex- 
travagant and  preposterous  schemes  of  "in- 
ternal improvements."  But  that  was  a  day 
of  inflated  hope,  and  Illinois  was  delirious 
with  land  gambling.  Lincoln,  like  the 
other  politicians  of  the  State,  was  swept 
along  by  the  current  of  popular  enthusiasm. 

54 


WHY  WE   LOVE  LINCOLN 

He  swaggered,  dreamed,  bragged  and  voted 
with  the  rest.  The  voters  wanted  railways, 
canals  and  river  improvements.  So  the 
Legislature  authorized  thirteen  hundred 
miles  of  railways,  a  canal  between  the  Illin- 
ois River  and  Lake  Michigan,  and  endless 
improvements  of  rivers  and  streams;  and 
to  carry  out  this  staggering  programme  of 
improvements  in  a  poor,  half -settled  frontier 
State,  a  loan  of  twelve  million  dollars  was 
voted. 

Not  only  did  Lincoln  in  his  early  life  vote 
for  this  audacious  and  spendthrift  scheme, 
in  response  to  a  harebrained  popular  de- 
mand, but  he  advocated  woman  suffrage; 
proposed  a  usury  rate,  with  the  naive  sug- 
gestion that  "in  cases  of  extreme  necessity 
there  could  always  be  found  means  to  cheat 
the  law";  wrote  foolish  love  letters  to  blue- 
eyed  Mary  Owens,  offering  to  keep  his  sup- 
posed marriage  engagement  to  her,  but  ad- 
vising her  for  her  own  sake  not  to  hold  him 
to  it;    and  developed  into  a  more  or  less 

55 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

ranting,  downright  country  politician,  ready 
to  make  a  stump  speech,  tell  a  story,  shake 
hands  with  a  crowd  or  thrash  a  ruffian  on 
the  slightest  provocation. 

And  when  the  capital  of  Illinois  was 
changed  to  Springfield,  he  rode  into  that 
town  on  a  borrowed  horse,  with  *'two  sad- 
dle-bags, containing  two  or  three  law  books 
and  a  few  pieces  of  clothing,"  and,  not  hav- 
ing seventeen  dollars  with  which  to  buy  a 
bed  and  furnishings,  accepted  a  free  room 
over  the  store  of  his  friend,  Mr.  Speed, 
dropped  his  saddlebags  on  the  floor  and 
smilingly  said,  *'Well,  Speed,  I'm  moved.'* 
That  was  his  entrance  into  the  town  which 
saw  his  rise  to  the  Presidency. 

Around  the  fireplace  in  Speed's  store  Lin- 
coln used  to  sit  with  Douglas,  Baker,  Cal- 
houn, Browning,  Lamborn  and  other  rising 
politicians  and  orators  of  the  West.  Here 
every  question  under  heaven  was  debated, 
stories  were  told,  jokes  cracked,  poems  re- 
cited ;  and  it  would  take  the  pen  of  a  Balzac 

56 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

to  describe  the  scenes  of  merriment,  or  seri- 
ous, sharp  contest,  that  happened  before 
those  blazing  logs,  with  an  attentive  ring  of 
friends  listening  to  the  never-ceasing  flow 
of  wit  and  wisdom. 

Again  and  again  Lincoln  was  elected  to 
the  Illinois  Legislature,  always  as  a  Whig. 
Yet  he  remained  humble  in  spirit.  In 
answer  to  the  taunt  that  the  Whigs  were 
aristocrats,  he  made  a  speech  showing  that 
he  understood  how  the  political  sympathies 
of  the  West  were  to  be  won: 

"I  was  a  poor  boy,  hired  on  a  flatboat  at 
eight  dollars  a  month,  and  had  only  one  pair 
of  breeches  to  my  back,  and  they  were  buck- 
skin. Now,  if  you  know  the  nature  of  buck- 
skin when  wet,  and  dried  by  the  sun,  it  will 
shrink;  and  my  breeches  kept  shrinking 
until  they  left  several  inches  of  my  legs  bare 
between  the  tops  of  my  socks  and  the  lower 
part  of  my  breeches ;  and  whilst  I  was  grow- 
ing taller,  they  were  becoming  shorter,  and 
so  much  tighter  that  they  left  a  blue  streak 

57 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

around  my  legs  that  can  be  seen  to  this  day. 
If  you  cah  this  aristocracy  I  plead  guilty  to 
the  charge." 

He  could  outwrestle,  outrun  and  out- 
talk  any  man  in  his  section.  He  was  recog- 
nized as  the  most  skillful  and  hard-headed 
politician  in  his  State.  His  courage  and 
shrewdness  in  ordinary  affairs  were  notable, 
and  his  honesty  and  earnestness,  sweetened 
by  a  sure  sense  of  humor,  lent  distinction 
and  dignity  to  a  ridiculous  figure  and  some- 
times theatrical  manner  of  address. 

Yet  there  was  a  strange,  gloomy  self-dis- 
trust in  Lincoln  which  showed  itself  in  his 
love  affairs ;  an  imaginative  melancholy  that 
wrung  his  heart  and  tortured  his  mind  with 
baseless,  shadowy  misgivings.  He  engaged 
himself  to  marry  Mary  Todd  and,  doubting 
his  own  love,  broke  the  engagement.  It  has 
been  even  charged  that  he  deserted  her  when 
she  was  attired  for  the  wedding.  Lincoln 
described  his  parting  to  Mr.  Speed: 

**When  I  told  Mary  I  did  not  love  her," 

58 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

he  said,  "she  burst  into  tears  and  almost 
springing  from  her  chair  and  wringing  her 
hands  as  if  in  agony,  said  something  about 
the  deceiver  being  himself  deceived.  To 
tell  you  the  truth.  Speed,  it  was  too  much 
for  me.  I  found  the  tears  trickling  down 
my  own  cheeks.  I  caught  her  in  my  arms 
and  kissed  her." 

So  great  was  Lincoln's  agony  and  depres- 
sion after  this  that  he  was  watched  by  his 
friends  lest  he  might  commit  suicide.  "I 
am  now  the  most  miserable  man  living,"  he 
wrote  to  Major  Stuart.  *'If  what  I  feel 
were  distributed  to  the  whole  human  family, 
there  would  not  be  one  cheerful  face  on 
earth.  Whether  I  shall  ever  be  better,  I 
cannot  tell;  I  awfully  forbode  I  shall 
not." 

The  shadow  of  threatened  insanity  passed, 
and  within  two  years  Mary  Todd  became 
his  wife.  It  was  a  singular  jest  of  fate  that 
he  should  have  won  her  away  from  Stephen 
A.  Douglas,  who  was  yet  to  be  his  rival  in 

59 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

the  great  anti-slavery  struggle  that  was 
ended  only  by  millions  of  armed  men. 

Poor  heart-torn,  shrewd,  foolish,  humble, 
sublime  Lincoln! 

Then  there  was  the  duel  with  James 
Shields.  That  hot-headed  Irishman  had 
challenged  Lincoln  to  fight  because  the  tall 
politician  had  written  certain  anonymous 
letters  for  the  Springfield  Journal.  Lincoln 
accepted  and  named  "cavalry  broadswords 
of  the  largest  size."  The  duelists  went  to 
the  place  appointed  by  the  river,  and  sat  on 
logs  on  opposite  sides  of  the  field.  Here  is 
a  description  of  the  scene  by  an  onlooker, 
from  Miss  Tarbell's  "Life  of  Abraham 
Lincoln": 

"I  watched  Lincoln  closely  while  he  set 
on  his  log  awaiting  the  signal  to  fight.  His 
face  was  grave  and  serious.  I  could  discern 
nothing  suggestive  of  'old  Abe,'  as  we  knew 
him.  I  never  knew  him  to  go  so  long  with- 
out making  a  joke,  and  I  began  to  believe 
he  was  getting  frightened.     But  presently 

60 


Senator  Stephen  A.  Douglas,  Lincoln's  great  rival 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

he  reached  over  and  picked  up  one  of  the 
swords,  which  he  drew  from  its  scabbard. 
Then  he  felt  along  the  edge  of  the  weapon 
with  his  thumb,  like  a  barber  feels  of  the 
edge  of  his  razor,  raised  himself  to  his  full 
height,  stretched  out  his  long  arms  and 
clipped  a  twig  from  above  his  head  with  the 
sword.  There  wasn't  another  man  of  us 
who  could  have  reached  anywhere  near  that 
twig,  and  the  absurdity  of  that  long-reaching 
fellow  fighting  with  cavalry  sabres  with 
Shields,  who  could  walk  under  his  arm, 
came  pretty  near  making  me  howl  with 
laughter.  After  Lincoln  had  cut  off  tlie 
twig  he  returned  the  sword  to  the  scabbard." 
Before  the  combat  could  begin,  friends 
arrived  in  a  canoe.  Shields  was  induced  to 
make  a  concession,  and  presently  Lincoln 
and  his  opponent  returned  to  town  fast 
friends. 


61 


VII 

WE  love  Lincoln  because  his  life 
plucks  every  harp-string  in  true 
democracy.  Lincoln  is  the  an- 
swer to  Socialism.  He  represents  individu- 
alism, justifying  opportunity.  Self-govern- 
ment stands  vindicated  in  his  name.  The 
thought  of  him  is  at  once  an  inspiration  and 
challenge  to  the  poorest  and  most  ignorant 
boy  or  man  in  America. 

But  we  love  him  most  of  all  because  he 
saved  the  nation  which  Washington  began, 
and,  in  the  bloody  act  of  salvation,  brought 
human  slavery  to  an  end  in  the  great  Re- 
public. 

In  following  I^incoln  through  his  pictur- 
esque and  gaunt  youth  and  through  his  serv- 
ice in  the  Illinois  Legislature  and  in  Con- 
gress to  the  point  where  the  inner  and  outer 
influences  of  his  life,  his  soul  and  its  envi- 
ronments, merged  into  one  supreme  idea — 

62 


WHY   WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

the  preservation  of  the  Union — we  must  not 
forget  the  things  that  preceded  the  final 
test  of  his  Ufe. 

Up  to  Lincohi's  time  it  had  not  been  de- 
termined whether  the  fathers  of  the  Repub- 
hc  had  really  produced  a  nation,  or  merely 
a  contract  or  treaty  between  independent 
and  sovereign  States.  The  system  of  sepa- 
rated, incoordinate  and  aloof  colonies — a 
shrewd  and  stubborn  British  device  for 
keeping  their  American  subjects  weak  by 
disunion — grew  into  the  system  of  States 
which  formed  the  Republic. 

When  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States  was  framed,  ten  of  the  thirteen  States 
had  prohibited  the  importation  of  slaves. 
Georgia  and  the  two  Carolinas  still  permit- 
ted the  slave  trade  with  Africa.  In  order 
not  to  leave  these  three  States  out  of  the 
Union,  the  Constitution  permitted  the  im- 
portation of  slaves  until  1808.  But  the  con- 
scious horror  of  that  concession  is  to  be 
recognized  in  the  care  with  which  the  word 

63 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

slavery  is  avoided.  To  satisfy  all  the  slave- 
owning  States,  whose  consent  was  necessary 
to  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution,  slavery 
itself,  within  those  States,  was  recognized 
and  sanctioned  by  a  clause  providing  that 
five  slaves  should  equal  three  free  persons 
as  a  basis  of  representation  in  the  national 
House  of  Representatives. 

So  that,  whether  we  like  the  remembrance 
or  not,  it  is  a  fact  that  the  founders  of  the 
nation  actually  did  sanction  slavery,  al- 
though there  was  some  righteous  talk  in 
the  Constitutional  Convention  over  the  re- 
luctant compromise. 

While  this  convention,  in  Philadelphia, 
was  legalizing  slavery,  the  Continental  Con- 
gress, in  New  York,  passed  an  ordinance 
for  the  government  of  the  *' territory  of  the 
United  States  northwest  of  the  river  Ohio," 
providing  that  slavery  should  be  forever  pro- 
hibited in  that  territory. 

In  1820  the  ocean  slave-trade  was  de- 
clared to  be  piracy,  punishable  by  death. 

64 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

In  that  same  year  Congress,  under  pres- 
sure from  the  slave  owners,  adopted  the 
Missouri  Compromise,  by  which  Missouri 
was  admitted  to  the  Union  as  a  slave  State, 
with  the  proviso  that  slavery  should  be  al- 
ways forbidden  in  any  other  part  of  the 
territory  north  of  36°  30'  north  latitude. 

New  England  raged  against  slavery.  Her 
abolitionists  cried  out  against  it  night  and 
day.  To  the  assertion  of  the  South  that 
slaves  were  valuable  property,  legally  ac- 
quired and  legally  held,  they  answered  that 
slavery  was  a  deep  damnation  in  the  sight  of 
God,  an  unspeakably  cruel  crime,  intoler- 
able among  civilized  men.  They  helped 
slaves  to  escape  from  their  masters,  and  did 
everything  in  their  power  to  make  a  farce 
of  the  laws  under  which  such  fugitives  might 
be  returned. 

A  great  gulf  opened  between  the  free 
States  and  the  slave  States,  a  gulf  flaming 
with  passion  and  menace.  Could  the  na- 
tion hold  together.^ 

65 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 


There  were  tremendous  scenes  in  the  Sen- 
ate in  1850,  when  a  compromise  was  reached. 
CaHfornia  was  to  be  admitted  a  free  State, 
slavery  was  to  be  aboHshed  in  the  District 
of  Columbia,  and  there  was  to  be  an  effective 
Fugitive  Slave  Law.  These  were  the  prin- 
cipal points. 

Henry  Clay,  in  his  seventy-third  year, 
spoke  for  two  days  in  favor  of  compromise 
and  peace,  picturing  the  frightful  war  that 
must  result  from  a  failure  to  agree.  John 
C.  Calhoun,  pale,  haggard  and  dying,  rose 
from  his  sick  bed,  staggered  into  the  Senate 
on  the  arms  of  friends  and,  being  too  weak 
to  speak,  sat  there  while  his  plea  for  the 
rights  of  the  South  was  read.  Then  he  went 
back  to  his  bed  to  die  a  few  days  later,  groan- 
ing, "The  South!  The  poor  South!  God 
knows  what  will  become  of  her."  Daniel 
Webster,  too,  raised  his  voice  for  com- 
promise in  one  of  his  noblest  orations. 
William  H.  Seward  and  Salmon  P.  Chase 
bitterly   opposed    any   compromise   on   the 

66 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

basis  of  the  Fugitive  Slave  Law.  So  fierce 
did  the  debate  become  that  Senator  Benton 
drew  a  pistol  on  Senator  Foote. 

Yet  in  the  end,  the  compromise  was 
adopted  and  the  Fugitive  Slave  Law  was 
passed. 

Then,  in  1854,  Stephen  A.  Douglas, 
United  States  Senator  from  Illinois,  intro- 
duced a  bill  providing  a  government  for 
the  immense  country  now  included  in  Kan- 
sas, Nebraska,  the  Dakotas,  Montana  and 
portions  of  Wyoming  and  Colorado — a  coun- 
try larger  than  all  the  existing  free  States. 
All  this  region  was  in  the  area  from  which 
slavery  was  forever  prohibited  by  the  Mis- 
souri Compromise.  Yet  Douglas'  bill  pro- 
vided that  whenever  any  part  of  the  territory 
should  be  admitted  to  the  Union  the  ques- 
tion of  slavery  or  free-soil  should  be  decided 
by  its  inhabitants.  This  was  the  famous 
"squatter  sovereignty"  idea,  a  virtual  repeal 
of  the  Missouri  Compromise. 

After  a  desperate  fight  in  Congress,  Doug- 

67 


WHY  WE  LOVE   LINCOLN 

las  carried  his  bill.  It  was  a  startling  step 
and  a  direct  bid  for  the  Democratic  nomi- 
nation for  the  Presidency.  By  this  act 
Douglas  made  himself  one  of  the  most  con- 
spicuous men  in  the  country. 

Hell  seemed  to  break  loose  after  Presi- 
dent Pierce  signed  this  bill.  It  became  im- 
possible to  enforce  the  Fugitive  Slave  Law. 
The  anti-slavery  agitation  in  the  North 
broke  out  with  indescribable  fury.  **  Uncle 
Tom's  Cabin*'  was  published.  The  aboli- 
tionists were  almost  insane  with  anger  and 
indignation.  Douglas  was  denounced  as  a 
scoundrel  who  had  sold  himself  to  the  slave- 
holders for  the  sake  of  his  Presidential  am- 
bitions. 

Lincoln  was  a  well-supported  candidate  for 
the  United  States  Senate  in  1854,  but  he  gave 
up  his  chance  and  threw  his  strength  to  Ly- 
man Trumbull,  a  weaker  candidate,  rather 
than  risk  the  election  of  a  pro-slavery  Senator. 

Miss  Tarbell  gives  this  picture  of  Lincoln 
by  his  friend,  Judge  Dickey: 

68 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

"After  a  while  we  went  upstairs  to  bed. 
There  were  two  beds  in  our  room,  and  I 
remember  that  Lincoln  sat  up  in  his  night- 
shirt on  the  edge  of  the  bed  arguing  the 
point  with  me.  At  last  we  went  to  sleep. 
Early  in  the  morning  I  woke  up,  and  there 
was  Lincoln  half  sitting  up  in  bed. 
*  Dickey,'  he  said,  *I  tell  you  this  nation 
cannot  exist  half  slave  and  half  free.'  *Oh, 
Lincoln,'  said  I,  'go  to  sleep.'" 

The  Territories  of  Kansas  and  Nebraska 
became  the  center  of  interest,  for  whether 
they  would  be  slave  States  or  free  States 
must  depend  upon  the  vote  of  their  inhab- 
itants, and  that  was  a  simple  question  of 
emigration. 

Bands  of  colonists  were  sent  to  Kansas  by 
both  the  slavery  and  anti-slavery  forces. 
The  work  of  colonizing  the  State  was  organ- 
ized on  a  large  scale  by  both  sides.  The 
pro-slavery  men  from  Missouri  crossed  into 
Kansas  in  1854  and  elected  a  pro-slavery 
delegate  to  Congress.     In  1855  about  five 

69 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

thousand  Missourians,  armed  with  pistols 
and  bowie  knives,  invaded  Kansas  and  car- 
ried the  elections  for  the  Territorial  Legis- 
lature. This  Legislature  enacted  the  Mis- 
souri slavery  laws  and,  in  addition,  provided 
the  death  penalty  for  inciting  slaves  to  leave 
their  masters  or  revolt.  The  Free  Soil  Kan- 
sans  thereupon  elected  a  Constitutional  Con- 
vention, and  organized  a  State  government, 
with  a  constitution  prohibiting  slavery. 

Thus  there  were  two  governments  in  Kan- 
sas, one  pro-slavery,  the  other  anti-slavery. 
Blood  began  to  flow  as  the  hostile  govern- 
ments collided. 

In  1856  Preston  Brooks,  a  nephew  of 
Senator  Butler,  of  South  Carolina,  stole  up 
behind  Senator  Sumner,  who  had  brilliantly 
defended  the  Free  Soilers  of  Kansas,  and 
beat  him  on  the  head  with  a  heavy  cane  till 
he  fell  unconscious.  The  pro-slavery  Kan- 
sans  sacked  the  town  of  Lawrence.  John 
Brown  and  his  abolitionist  fanatics  went 
from  cabin  to  cabin  in  Kansas,  killing  and 

70 


WHY   WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

mutilating  pro-slavery  men.  Riots  and  mur- 
ders terrorized  the  State.  It  was  war  to  the 
knife  between  slavery  and  anti-slavery.  And 
Douglas,  in  Washington,  was  pressing  his 
bill  declaring  that,  as  soon  as  Kansas  had 
ninety-three  thousand  voters,  the  pro-slavery 
Territorial  Legislature  should  call  a  con- 
vention and  organize  the  State. 


71 


VIII 

IT  was  In  1856  that  the  conscience  and 
courage  of  the  North  found  a  voice  in 
Abraham  Lincoln.  In  his  great  soul 
the  civilization  of  America  suddenly  flow- 
ered. 

In  Congress  Lincoln  had  vainly  opposed 
the  war  with  Mexico  as  "unnecessary  and 
unconstitutional,"  and  he  had  gone  back  to 
Springfield  to  practice  law  with  his  new 
partner,  William  H.  Herndon. 

The  mighty  sweep  of  events  in  the  coun- 
try had  forced  the  Whigs  and  Northern 
Democrats  to  form  the  Free  Soil  party, 
not  to  extinguish  slavery,  but  to  prevent 
its  spread  from  the  slave  States  into  the 
free  Territories,  and  Lincoln's  tongue  had 
pleaded  powerfully  for  freedom.  But  Fre- 
mont, the  Free  Soil  candidate  for  President, 
was   defeated,   and   the   contending   slave- 


Abraham  Lincoln.     This  photograjjh  was  made  by  Hesler,  in 

Chicago,  about  1860 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

owners  and  abolitionists  continued  to  press 
the  cup  of  horror  and  hatred  to  the  tremb- 
Hng  hps  of  the  nation.  The  South  threat- 
ened to  withdraw  from  the  Union. 

Again  and  again  Lincoln  had  expressed 
his  opinion  that  slavery  was  a  crime  against 
civilization.  In  the  teeth  of  Senator  Doug- 
las, the  eloquent  and  all-powerful  Demo- 
cratic leader  of  Illinois,  who  was  arousing 
the  West  for  slavery,  he  lashed  and  trampled 
upon  the  attempt  to  make  Kansas  a  slave 
State. 

While  trying  to  obtain  the  release  of  a 
free-born  Illinois  negro  boy  held  by  the  au- 
thorities of  Louisiana,  Lincoln  appealed  to 
to  the  Governor  of  Illinois,  to  whom  he  said, 
**By  God,  Governor,  I'll  make  the  ground 
in  this  country  too  hot  for  the  foot  of  a  slave, 
whether  you  have  the  legal  power  to  secure 
the  release  of  this  boy  or  not.'* 

Even  then  the  man  who  felt  in  himself 
the  stirrings  of  power  great  enough  to  utter 
that  threat  was  a  grotesque  figure  among 

73 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

his  fellow  -  lawyers.  Yet  there  was  no 
shrewder  advocate,  no  more  effective  jury- 
pleader  and  no  kindlier  heart  in  Illinois. 
Mr.  Herndon  gives  this  picture  of  him: 

"His  hat  was  brown,  faded,  and  the  nap 
usually  worn  or  rubbed  off.  He  wore  a 
short  cloak  and  sometimes  a  shawl.  His 
coat  and  vest  hung  loosely  on  his  gaunt 
frame,  and  his  trousers  were  invariably  too 
short.  On  the  circuit  he  carried  in  one 
hand  a  faded  green  umbrella,  with  'A  Lin- 
coln' in  large  white  cotton  or  muslin  letters 
sewed  on  the  inside.  The  knob  was  gone 
from  the  handle,  and  when  closed  a  piece 
of  cord  was  usually  tied  around  it  in  the 
middle  to  keep  it  from  flying  open.  In  the 
other  hand  he  carried  a  literal  carpet  bag, 
in  which  were  stored  the  few  papers  to  be 
used  in  court,  and  underclothing  enough  to 
last  until  his  return  to  Springfield.  He 
slept  in  a  long,  coarse  yellow  flannel  shirt, 
which  reached  half  way  between  his  knees 
and  ankles.'* 

74 


WHY  WE  LOVE  LINCOLN 


Lincoln  was  not  a  distinguished  lawyer. 
Nor  was  he  a  financial  success  in  his  pro- 
fession. His  partners  complained  that  he 
neglected  the  business  side  of  things  and 
was  completely  absorbed  in  the  justice  or 
humanity  involved  in  his  cases.  His  heart 
would  melt  over  the  sorrows  of  a  client,  and 
he  would  either  accept  a  petty  fee  or  alto- 
gether neglect  to  collect  anything.  Mr. 
Lamon,  his  junior  partner,  has  testified  that 
when  he  charged  a  fee  of  $250,  Lincoln  made 
him  return  half  the  money  to  their  client  on 
the  ground  that  "the  service  was  not  worth 
the  sum."  So  extreme  was  his  generosity 
and  charity,  so  averse  was  he  to  accepting 
anything  but  the  most  modest  fees,  that 
Judge  David  Davis  once  rebuked  him  from 
the  bench  for  impoverishing  his  brother  law- 
yers by  such  an  example. 

Not  only  that,  but  Lincoln  many  times  in 
court  showed  his  deep  and  unfailing  love  of 
justice  and  fair  play  by  refusing  to  take  ad- 
vantage of  the  mere  slips  of  his  opponents. 

75 


WHY  WE  LOVE  LINCOLN 

That  generous  honesty  made  him  a  power 
with  judges  and  juries. 

It  was  when  the  Repubhcan  party  was 
born  in  the  convention  at  Bloomington, 
lUinois,  on  May  29,  1856,  that  Lincoln  dis- 
played the  full  grandeur  of  his  character. 
His  speech  opposing  the  extension  of  slavery 
to  Kansas  was  so  stirring,  his  presence  so 
inspiring,  that  the  reporters  forgot  to  take 
notes.  His  hearers  were  thrilled,  swept  out 
of  themselves.  He  seemed  to  grow  taller  as 
he  spoke,  his  eyes  flashed,  his  face  shone  with 
passion,  he  seemed  suddenly  beautiful,  for 
his  soul  was  in  his  eyes  and  on  his  lips  as  he 
declared  that  slavery  was  a  violation  of 
eternal  right. 

"We  have  temporized  with  it  from 
the  necessities  of  our  condition,"  he  said, 
"but  as  sure  as  God  reigns  and  school 
children  read,  that  black,  foul  lie  can 
never  be  consecrated  into  God's  hallowed 
truth." 

McClure's  Magazine  in  1896  gave  a  re- 

76 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

port  of  this  extraordinary  speech.  Here  is 
an  extract: 

"Do  not  mistake  that  the  ballot  is  stronger 
than  the  bullet.  Therefore,  let  the  legions 
of  slavery  use  bullets;  but  let  us  wait  pa- 
tiently till  November  and  fire  ballots  at  them 
in  return.  .  .  .  We  will  be  loyal  to  the 
Constitution  and  to  the  *flag  of  our  Union,' 
and  no  matter  what  our  grievance — even 
though  Kansas  shall  come  in  as  a  slave 
State;  and  no  matter  what  theirs — even  if 
we  shall  restore  the  Compromise — we  will 
say  to  the  Southern  disunionists,  ^We  won't 
go  out  of  the  Union  and  you  shanHf  " 

We  love  Lincoln  because  on  that  day  he 
spoke  as  one  naked  in  the  presence  of  God. 
There  was  no  lie  in  his  mouth.  Slavery 
must  be  kept  out  of  Kansas.  Kansas  must 
be  free.  Slavery  was  an  unspeakable  of- 
fence in  the  nostrils  of  a  free  people.  Yet, 
since  the  Constitution  and  the  Missouri 
Compromise  permitted  it  in  the  slave  States, 
a  law-respecting  nation  must  permit  it  to 

77 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

remain  there.  But  Kansas  must  be  free. 
All  the  soil  as  yet  uncursed  by  slavery  must 
be  kept  free. 

And  slave  or  free,  the  nation  must  be  held 
together — that  was  the  central  note  of  Lin- 
coln's great  speech. 

It  is  a  common  mistake  to  suppose  that 
Lincoln  was  an  advocate  of  the  abolition  of 
slavery  in  the  United  States.  Yet  in  1854, 
while  denouncing  slavery  as  a  "monstrous 
injustice,"  he  said: 

'*When  Southern  people  tell  us  they  are 
no  more  responsible  for  the  origin  of  slavery 
than  we,  I  acknowledge  the  fact.  When  it 
is  said  that  the  institution  exists  and  that  it 
is  very  difficult  to  get  rid  of  it  in  any  satis- 
factory way,  I  can  understand  and  appre- 
ciate the  saying.  I  surely  will  not  blame 
them  for  not  doing  what  I  should  not  know 
how  to  do  myself.  If  all  earthly  power  were 
given  me,  I  should  not  know  what  to  do  as 
to  the  existing  institution." 

There  was  a  sincere  man,  brave  enough 

78 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

and  humble  enough  to  make  such  an  admis- 
sion in  the  teeth  of  the  terrific  aboHtionist 
crusade.  So,  too,  he  stood  in  1856.  The 
nation  had  given  its  word,  right  or  wrong, 
to  the  slaveholders,  and  the  nation's  word 
must  be  kept.     But  Kansas  must  be  free. 

No,  tender  and  merciful  as  Lincoln  was, 
he  did  not  raise  his  voice  for  negro  emancipa- 
tion. That  thought  came  years  afterwards, 
when,  in  the  agony  of  fratricidal  strife,  he 
proclaimed  the  freedom  of  the  blacks  as  a 
war  measure. 

However,  when  the  Supreme  Court  of  the 
United  States  in  1857  decided  in  the  Dred 
Scott  case  that  a  negro  could  not  sue  in  the 
national  courts,  and  expressed  the  opinion 
that  Congress  could  not  prohibit  slavery  in 
the  territories,  there  was  a  fierce  outcry  in 
the  free  States,  for  five  of  the  Supreme  Court 
justices  were  from  slave  States.  It  is  im- 
possible to  indicate  the  pitch  of  excitement 
in  the  country. 

Senator  Douglas,  prompt,  bold,  master- 

79 


WHY  WE  LOVE   LINCOLN 

ful,  faced  his  constituents  in  Illinois  and 
stigmatized  opposition  to  the  Supreme  Court 
as  simple  anarchy.  Lincoln  answered  him 
at  once.  The  people  must  not  resist  the 
court,  but  it  was  well  known  that  the  court 
had  often  overruled  its  own  decisions  and 
"it  is  not  resistance,  it  is  not  factious,  it  is 
not  even  disrespectful,  to  treat  it  as  not  hav- 
ing yet  quite  established  a  settled  doctrine 
for  the  country." 

Another  strain  was  placed  upon  the  nerves 
of  the  overwrought  country.  By  trickery 
the  pro-slavery  men  of  Kansas  had  brought 
about  the  "Lecompton  Constitution,"  per- 
mitting slavery  in  the  State.  President 
Buchanan  pressed  for  the  admission  of  Kan- 
sas into  the  Union  with  this  constitution. 

So,  in  1858,  when  Lincoln  was  nominated 
by  the  Republicans  to  succeed  Douglas  in 
the  Senate,  and  when  he  challenged  Doug- 
las to  a  joint  debate,  the  nation  was  in  the 
throes  of  an  agitation  that  transcended  all 
other  passions  in  its  history. 

80 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

When  the  long-legged  country  lawyer,  in 
loose-hung  cloak,  faded  hat  and  ill-fitting 
trousers — sunken-eyed,  lantern- jawed  and 
stoop-shouldered — went  forth  to  meet  the 
great  Senator  before  the  people,  the  whole 
country  watched  the  struggle  with  intense 
interest.  For,  ever  since  Andrew  Jackson 
overthrew  the  Virginia  oligarchy,  the  West 
had  grown  stronger  in  the  national  councils, 
and  it  was  even  now  suspected  that  the  bal- 
ance of  political  power  was  passing  from 
the  South  to  the  North.  And  Lincoln,  risen 
from  the  soil  itself,  was  a  singularly  bitter 
challenge  to  the  aristocratic  and  haughty 
temper  of  the  slaveowners. 

Who  can  describe  that  unforgetable  and 
decisive  debate  in  Illinois.'^ 

On  the  very  day  of  his  nomination  Lin- 
coln uttered  the  thought  that  was  pressed  on 
and  on  until  slavery  and  secession  were 
trampled  into  dust  under  the  heels  of  the 
Union  armies: 

*'A  house  divided  against  itself  cannot 

81 


WHY  WE  LOVE  LINCOLN 

stand.  I  believe  this  government  cannot 
endure  permanently  half  slave  and  half 
free.  I  do  not  expect  the  house  to  fall — 
but  I  do  expect  it  will  cease  to  be  divided. 
It  will  become  all  one  thing  or  all  the  other." 

Gaunt,  gray-eyed,  crooked-mouthed  Lin- 
coln! In  all  history  no  man  ever  flayed  an 
opponent  as  he  did  Douglas. 

*'I  tremble  for  my  country  when  I  re- 
member that  God  is  just,"  he  exclaimed  in 
one  of  his  loftiest  moments. 

He  pelted  Douglas  with  logic,  exposed  the 
sham  of  his  ''squatter  sovereignty"  doc- 
trine, and  pitilessly  analyzed  the  predatory 
policy  of  the  slavery  forces.  He  forced 
Douglas  to  defend  and  explain  his  Kansas- 
Nebraska  law,  trapped  him  into  confusing 
admissions  and  showed  that  his  popular 
sovereignty  principle  meant  simply  "that 
if  one  man  chooses  to  make  a  slave  of  an- 
other man,  neither  that  other  man,  nor  any- 
body else,  has  a  right  to  object." 

Against  the  awkward  country  lawyer  with 

82 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

shrivelled,  melancholy  countenance  and 
shrill  voice,  the  polished,  handsome  and  re- 
sourceful Douglas  contended  in  vain  in  the 
seven  monster  outdoor  meetings  of  the  de- 
bates. The  humanity  of  Lincoln,  the  fair- 
ness of  his  statements,  the  moral  height  from 
which  he  spoke,  the  homely,  cutting  anec- 
dotes, the  originality  and  imagination,  the 
obvious  simplicity  and  sincerity  of  his  argu- 
ments beat  down  Douglas'  lawyer-like  pleas. 

Douglas  charged  Lincoln  with  favoring 
the  political  and  social  equality  of  the  white 
and  black  races.  Lincoln  denied  that  he 
considered  the  negro  the  equal  of  the  white 
man.  "But  in  the  right  to  eat  the  bread 
which  his  own  hands  earns,"  he  added,  "he 
is  my  equal,  and  the  equal  of  Judge  Doug- 
las, and  the  equal  of  every  living  man." 

Nothing  in  the  whole  story  of  the  Ameri- 
can people  approaches  this  struggle  between 
Lincoln  and  Douglas  for  dramatic  setting 
and  popular  enthusiasm;  and  nothing  in 
Lincoln's  life  proved  more  clearly  that  with 

83 


WHY  WE   LOVE  LINCOLN 

his  feet  set  upon  a  moral  issue  he  was  match- 
less. He  was  filled  with  the  majesty  of  his 
cause. 

"If  slavery  is  right,"  he  said  that  winter  in 
Cooper  Institute,  New  York,  "all  words, 
acts,  laws  and  constitutions  against  it  are 
themselves  wrong,  and  should  be  silenced 
and  swept  away.  If  it  is  right,  we  cannot 
justly  object  to  its  nationality,  its  univer- 
sality. If  it  is  wrong,  they  cannot  justly 
insist  upon  its  extension,  its  enlargement. 
All  they  ask  we  could  readily  grant,  if  we 
thought  slavery  right;  all  we  ask  they  could 
as  readily  grant,  if  they  thought  it  wrong. 
Their  thinking  it  right  and  our  thinking  it 
wrong  is  the  precise  facts  upon  which  de- 
pends the  whole  controversy." 

In  the  race  for  the  Senatorship  Douglas 
defeated  Lincoln ;  but  in  that  defeat  Lincoln 
won  a  great  victory  in  the  awakened  con- 
science and  courage  of  the  North. 

We  who  love  him  now  can  hardly  under- 
stand how  deep  was  the  love  and  bow  great 

84 


An  unpublished  photograph  of  Ivincoln  in  1860.  framed  in  walnut 
rails  split  by  him  in  his  woodchopper  days.  Owned  by  Charles 
W.  McClellan  of  New  York 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

the  confidence  that,  a  year  later,  raised  the 
cabin-born,  uncouth  country  lawyer  and 
politician  to  be  President  of  the  United 
States. 

We  remember  his  strength  and  faith  in 
the  great  war;  we  remember  his  gentle  pa- 
tience, his  justice  and  mercy,  and  his  mar- 
tyrdom; but  do  we  fully  realize  the  effort 
he  made  to  save  his  people  from  the  ghastly 
sacrifice  made  on  the  battlefields  where  the 
nation  was  reborn? 


85 


IX 

How  still  Lincoln  became  after  his 
nomination  for  President  in  1860! 
A  note  of  acceptance,  just  twenty- 
three  lines  long,  and  then  unbroken  silence 
till  the  end  of  the  campaign. 

He  had  thundered  throughout  the  country 
against  the  Christless  creed  of  slavery  until 
men  forgot  his  crude  manners,  preposterous 
figure  and  shrill,  piping  voice  in  admiration 
and  reverence  of  his  noble  qualities. 

Now  the  crooked  mouth  was  set  hard.  He 
retired  to  his  modest  home  in  Springfield, 
Illinois.  Nor  could  threats  or  persuasions 
induce  him  to  address  a  word  to  the  public 
during  that  terrific  campaign  which  was  the 
prelude  to  the  horrors  of  civil  war. 

In  the  upward  Teachings  of  Lincoln's  life 
there  was  a  singular  mysticism  that  some- 
times startles  one  who  contemplates  the  im- 
perishable grandeur  of  his  place  in  history. 

86 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

He  saw  omens  in  dreams;  experimented 
with  the  ghostly  world  of  spiritualism ;  half- 
surrendered  to  madness,  when  his  personal 
affections  were  attacked;  predicted  a  vio- 
lent death  for  himself;  dreamed  of  his  own 
assassination,  and  discussed  the  matter  seri- 
ously; and  gave  evidence  many  times  of  a 
strange,  aberrant  emotional  exaltation,  alter- 
nated with  brooding  sadness  or  hilarious, 
uncontrollable  merriment. 

But  behind  these  mere  eccentricities  were 
sanity,  conscience,  strength  and  far-seeing 
penetrativeness. 

In  the  midst  of  his  heroic  debate  on  slavery 
with  Douglas  in  1858,  while  the  whole  nation 
watched  the  exciting  struggle,  he  showed  his 
statesmanlike  appreciation  of  the  situation 
when  he  said :  "I  am  after  larger  game ;  the 
battle  of  1860  is  worth  a  hundred  of  this." 
And  when  he  was  nominated  in  the  roar- 
ing Chicago  Convention,  where  the  fore- 
most politicians  of  the  East  actually  shed 
tears  over  the  defeat  of  William  H.  Seward, 

87 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

he  let  his  party  do  the  shouting,  promising, 
denouncing  and  hurrahing,  while  he — wiser, 
cooler,  abler  than  all — stood  squarely  on  his 
record  and  his  party's  platform,  without 
apology,  explanation  or  mitigation. 

To  his  mind  the  issue  was  simple.  It 
could  not  be  misunderstood.  Slavery  was 
immoral.  It  must  be  confined  to  the  slave 
States,  where  it  had  a  constitutional  sanc- 
tion, but  uncompromisingly  kept  out  of  the 
free  territories. 

Yet  the  country  rang  with  threats  that  the 
slave  States  would  break  up  the  Union  if 
Lincoln  was  elected.  He  had  declared  that  ' 
the  nation  could  not  endure  half  slave  and 
half  free.  That,  they  insisted,  was  a  decla- 
ration of  war  against  the  slave  States. 

Lincoln  drew  the  short  gray  shawl  about 
his  stooped  shoulders,  and  his  face  grew 
more  sorrowful.     But  he  said  nothing. 

Not  many  months  before  he  had  written  a 
letter  to  a  Jefferson  birthday  festival  in  Bos- 
ton, in  which  he  flung  the  name  of  Jefferson 

88 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

against  the  Democrats  as  Douglas  hurled  the 
heart  of  Bruce  into  the  ranks  of  the  heathen: 

"The  Democracy  of  to-day  holds  the 
liberty  of  one  man  to  be  absolutely  nothing 
when  in  conflict  with  another  man's  right 
of  property. 

Republicans,  on  the  contrary,  are  for 
both  the  man  and  the  dollar;  but  in  cases  of 
conflict,  the  man  before  the  dollar. 

I  remember  being  once  amused  much  at 
seeing  two  partially  intoxicated  men  engage 
in  a  fight  with  their  great  coats  on,  which 
fight,  after  a  long  and  rather  harmless  con- 
test, ended  in  each  having  fought  himself 
out  of  his  own  coat  and  into  that  of  the 
other.  If  the  two  leading  parties  of  this 
day  are  really  identical  with  the  two  in  the 
days  of  Jefferson  and  Adams,  they  have  per- 
formed the  same  feat  as  the  two  drunken 
men.     .     .     . 

The  principles  of  Jefferson  are  the  defini- 
tions and  axioms  of  free  society,  and  yet 

89 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

they  are  denied  and  evaded,  with  no  small 
show  of  success.  One  dashingly  calls  them 
*  glittering  generalities.'  Another  bluntly 
calls  them  'self-evident  lies.'  And  others 
insidiously  argue  that  they  apply  to  'supe- 
rior races.'     .     .     . 

This  is  a  world  of  compensation;  and  he 
who  would  be  ^.o  slave  must  consent  to  have 
no  slave.  Those  who  deny  freedom  to  oth- 
ers deserve  it  not  for  themselves,  and,  under 
a  just  God,  cannot  long  retain  it.  All  honor 
to  Jefferson — to  the  man  who,  in  the  con- 
crete pressure  of  a  struggle  for  national  in- 
dependence by  a  single  people,  had  the  cool- 
ness, forecast,  and  the  capacity  to  introduce 
into  a  merely  revolutionary  document  an 
abstract  truth,  applicable  to  all  men  and  all 
times,  and  so  to  embalm  it  there  that  to-day 
and  in  all  coming  days  it  shall  be  a  rebuke 
and  a  stumbling-block  to  the  very  harbingers 
of  reappearing  tyranny  and  oppression. 
Your  obedient  servant, 

A.  Lincoln." 
90 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 


After  that  no  man  might  claim  that  he  had 
not  bared  his  soul. 

Editors,  political  leaders,  personal  friends, 
vainly  attempted  during  the  Presidential 
campaign  to  draw  from  him  some  public 
expression  of  opinion,  some  hint  of  what  was 
going  on  in  his  mind  while  the  national  hori- 
zon flamed  with  passion  and  threats  of  war 
were  openly  made  by  the  slaveholders. 

But  he  knew  that  it  would  not  pay  to  say 
a  word  that  might  complicate  a  question  so 
clear.  The  American  people  were  sound  at 
heart.  If  the  issue  could  be  confined  to  the 
question  of  whether  slavery  was  morally 
right  or  wrong,  the  common  people  could 
be  depended  upon  to  vote  against  spreading 
it  to  the  free  territories. 

Lincoln's  confidence  in  the  plain  people 
grew  with  years.  In  spite  of  his  shrewd  ex- 
perience in  politics  he  was  free  from  cynic- 
ism. There  was  a  childlike  simplicity  in 
his  character,  a  central  purity  and  earnest- 
ness, that  enabled  him  to  see  under  the 

91 


WHY  WE  LOVE  LINCOLN 

broadcloth  and  ruffles  of  the  East  the  same 
elemental  humanity  he  had  known  under 
the  deerhide,  jeans  and  coonskins  of  the 
West. 

Up  to  the  hour  of  his  death  he  gave  no 
evidence  of  class  consciousness.  The  rich 
citizen  was  no  better  and  no  worse  than  the 
poor  citizen.  The  college  professor  was  no 
better  and  no  worse  than  the  field  hand.  At 
the  bottom  of  each  was  the  original  man, 
with  almost  divine  possibilities  of  justice, 
love  and  compassion  in  him. 

It  was  this  supreme  faith  in  the  better  na- 
tures of  men,  and  their  ability  to  reach  sound 
conclusions  on  simple  moral  issues,  that  per- 
suaded Lincoln  to  remain  mute  throughout 
the  struggle. 

How  many  political  leaders  are  there  in 
the  United  States  to-day  who  disclose  their 
minds  and  hearts  so  unreservedly  to  the 
people  that  they  could  dare  io  stand  for 
office  with  closed  lips,  relying  solely  on  their 
record  and  on  the  general  public  intelligence? 

92 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

Even  in  his  career  as  a  lawyer  Lincoln 
made  fun  of  himself.  His  small  fees  were 
the  jest  of  his  companions.  It  is  probable 
that  he  did  not  earn  an  average  of  more 
than  three  thousand  dollars  a  year,  notwith- 
standing his  eloquence  and  logic.  When 
he  went  to  the  White  House,  all  his  posses- 
sions, including  his  residence,  were  worth 
only  about  seveji  thousand  dollars. 

So  he  laughed  at  and  made  light  of  his  per- 
sonal appearance.  The  change  from  deer- 
hide  breeches  and  coonskin  cap  to  black 
cloth  and  a  high  silk  hat  simply  emphasized 
the  clumsy  enormity  of  his  figure.  His  skin 
was  yellow  and  his  face  seamed  and  puck- 
ered. The  gray  eyes  looked  out  of  hollow 
sockets.  The  high  cheek-bones  protruded 
sharply  above  sunken  cheeks.  The  mouth 
was  awry  and  the  neck  long,  lean  and 
scraggy.  His  immensely  long  arms  swung 
loosely  from  stooped  shoulders,  his  trousers 
were  always  "hitched  up  too  high,"  and  his 
ill-kept  hat  was  set  at  a  grotesque  tilt  from 

93 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

his  lugubrious  countenance.  His  great 
height,  the  lank,  swinging  slouchiness  of  his 
immense  frame,  his  somber,  saggy  clothing 
and  sorrowful  expression,  added  to  uncon- 
ventional manners,  made  him  a  target  for  his 
political  opponents. 

"Old  ape,"  "ignorant  baboon" — these 
were  the  favorite  flings  of  the  Southern  Dem- 
ocrats. He  was  pictured  as  a  raw,  coarse, 
brutal  and  reckless  "nigger  lover,"  filled 
with  hatred  of  the  slave  States,  eager  to  rob 
them  of  their  legitimate  property,  a  half- 
horse-half-alligator,  unfit  to  enter  a  polite 
house  or  associate  with  gentlemen,  and  al- 
most insane  with  the  murderous  fanaticism 
of  the  New  England  abolitionists. 

If  Lincoln  felt  the  sting  of  this  cruel  satire 
he  gave  no  sign  of  it.  So  humble  was  his 
nature  that,  after  his  election,  he  grew  a 
beard  at  the  suggestion  of  a  little  girl,  who 
wrote  to  say  that  it  might  make  him  look 
better.  He  wTote  this  during  the  Presiden- 
tial campaign: 

94 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

"If  any  personal  description  of  me  is 
thought  desirable,  it  may  be  said,  I  am,  in 
height,  six  feet,  four  inches,  nearly;  lean  in 
flesh,  weighing  on  an  average,  one  hundred 
and  eighty  pounds;  dark  complexion,  with 
coarse  black  hair  and  gray  eyes — No  other 
marks  or  brands  recollected.    A.  Lincoln." 

He  was  silent  in  the  face  of  pitiless  abuse 
and  carricature,  yet  he  sent  many  confiden- 
tial letters,  advising,  encouraging,  admon- 
ishing the  Republican  leaders.  While  his 
supporters  carried  fence-rails  in  processions 
and  shouted  hosannahs,  he  quietly  directed 
matters  from  his  home. 

And,  although  he  would  sometimes  laugh 
with  a  pure  humor  that  bubbled  up  uncon- 
sciously from  his  blameless  nature,  as  the 
strain  of  the  political  campaign  increased, 
the  tragic  sadness  of  his  countenance  deep- 
ened, for  his  keen  eyes  began  to  see  the  aw- 
ful significance  of  the  eminence  to  which  he 
was  to  be  lifted. 

95 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

A  year  ago  the  rebellion  of  John  Brown 
at  Harper's  Ferry  had  dramatically  revealed 
the  irreconcilable  temperaments  of  North 
and  South.  While  Virginia  enthusiastically 
hanged  the  man  who  tried  to  create  an 
armed  negro  revolution,  the  North  tolled 
her  bells,  lowered  her  flags  to  half-mast  and 
glorified  him  as  a  holy  martyr. 


96 


X 

A  MONTH  before  the  first  vote  for  Pres- 
ident was  cast,  Governor  Gist,  of 
South  CaroHna,  addressed  a  secret 
circular  to  the  other  slave  State  governors 
saying,  that  if  Lincoln  were  elected,  which 
seemed  almost  certain.  South  Carolina  would 
secede  from  the  Union.  The  whole  South 
was  urged  to  join  in  this  dismemberment  of 
the  republic. 

The  answers  of  the  governors,  even  be- 
fore the  election  had  occurred,  showed  that 
it  was  not  the  intention  of  the  slave  States  to 
submit  to  the  rule  of  the  majority,  and  that, 
already,  armed  resistance  to  the  national 
authority  was  acceptable  as  the  alternative 
to  "the  yoke  of  a  black  Republican  Presi- 
dent." 

If  any  secret  voice  of  this  germinating 
treason  reached  Lincoln  at  Springfield  he 
kept  it  to  himself. 

97 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

But  when  his  victory  was  assured  by  a 
majority  that  made  the  combined  vote  of 
his  opponents  seem  insignificant,  his  con- 
tinued silence  in  the  midst  of  general  re- 
joicing and  boasting  showed  that  he  under- 
stood the  gravity  of  the  situation. 

South  Carolina  w  ithdrew  from  the  Union, 
seizing  custom  houses,  post  ofiices,  arsenals 
and  forts. 

President  Buchanan,  old,  weak  and  cow- 
ardly, promised  to  use  no  force  against  the 
rebels,  but  to  leave  everything  to  Congress. 
His  Secretary  of  War,  Mr.  Floyd,  of  Vir- 
ginia, was  a  traitor,  secretly  helping  the 
slave  States  to  arm  against  the  general  gov- 
ernment. His  Secretary  of  the  Treasury, 
Mr.  Cobb,  of  Georgia,  also  conspired  with 
the  disunionists,  and  finally  resigned  to  take 
part  in  the  rebellion.  His  Secretary  of  the 
Interior,  Mr.  Thompson,  of  Mississippi, 
actually  acted  as  a  rebel  commissioner  to 
spread  the  doctrine  of  secession  while  he 
was    still   in   the    Cabinet.     The   Assistant 

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WHY  WE  LOVE  LINCOLN 

Secretary  of  State,  Mr.  Trescott,  was  an- 
other member  of  the  great  plot. 

Within  two  months,  Mississippi,  Florida, 
Alabama,  Georgia,  Louisiana  and  Texas 
had  followed  South  Carolina  out  of  the 
Union.  Forts,  arsenals,  post  offices  and 
custom  houses  were  captured,  the  Stars  and 
Stripes  lowered,  and  the  rebel  flag  hoisted. 

Before  Lincoln  could  be  inaugurated,  the 
seceded  States  had  organized  a  Confeder- 
ate government,  with  Jefi^erson  Davis  for 
President. 

With  treason  in  his  Cabinet,  and  armed 
rebellion  openly  preached  in  Congress,  the 
bewildered,  rabbit-hearted  Buchanan  did 
nothing  to  defend  the  national  sovereignty. 
He  was  no  traitor — simply  a  poltroon,  with- 
out character,  convictions  or  courage  enough 
to  assert  the  plain  powers  of  his  office,  and 
willing  to  shelter  his  cringing  soul  and  dis- 
honored responsibilities  behind  a  paramount 
authority  which  he  pretended  to  find  in 
Congress. 

99 


WHY  WE  LOVE  LINCOLN 

Imagine  Lincoln,  sitting  in  far-away 
Springfield,  helpless  to  act,  while  Buchanan 
permitted  a  foreign  government  to  be  set  up 
within  the  United  States,  and  promised  to 
use  no  force  aganist  the  rebels  lest  war 
might  follow. 

Think  of  the  newly-chosen  leader  of  the 
American  people  compelled  to  silence  and 
impotence  while  the  President  refused  to 
send  relief  to  loyal  Major  Anderson  and  his 
handful  of  soldiers  besieged  in  Fort  Sumter 
by  rebels  whose  arms  had  been  furnished 
by  the  government  they  sought  to  destroy! 

The  lines  in  Lincoln's  face  deepened. 
His  eyes  grew  more  sorrowful.  The  stoop- 
ing shoulders  stooped  still  lower.  There 
was  that  in  his  look  sometimes  that  com- 
pelled mingled  awe  and  pity. 

For  Lincoln  loved  his  country  with  the 
love  that  a  father  has  for  his  child,  and  the 
pent-up  agony  that  showed  in  his  lean  visage 
as  he  watched  the  attempt  to  break  up  the 
great  republic  might  not  yet  find  utterance. 

100 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

It  was  useless  for  him  to  repeat  that  he 
did  not  hate  the  South;  that  he  did  not  favor 
the  poHtical  and  social  equality  of  negroes 
and  whites ;  that  he  was  not  an  abolitionist ; 
that,  although  he  considered  slavery  wrong 
and  would  oppose  its  extension  to  Kansas 
and  all  other  free  soil  of  the  United  States, 
he  would  do  nothing  to  interfere  with  it  in 
the  States  where  it  had  Constitutional  rights. 

Yet  he  waited  patiently  and  silently,  be- 
lieving that  he  could  persuade  the  South 
that  he  was  not  an  enemy,  and  in  that  time  of 
slow  anguish  his  soul  turned  to  God  for  help. 

The  careless,  foot-free,  waggish  wood- 
chopper  of  New  Salem  had  scoffed  at  reli- 
gion, and  written  a  bitter  attack  on  the  Bible, 
which  a  wiser  friend  had  snatched  from  his 
hands  and  burned.  The  President-elect 
with  the  cares  of  a  mighty  nation  in  its 
death  throes  descending  upon  his  shoulders, 
stretched  his  hands  child-like  to  a  power 
greater  even  than  the  "omnipotent  and  sov- 
ereign people." 

101 


WHY  WE  LOVE  LINCOLN 

Mr.  Herndon,  his  law  partner,  has  given 
us  an  unforgetable  picture  of  Lincoln  a  day 
before  his  departure  for  the  White  House: 

"He  crossed  to  thj  opposite  side  of  the 
room  and  threw  himself  down  on  the  old 
oflBce  sofa,  which,  after  many  years  of  serv- 
ice, had  been  moved  against  the  wall  for 
support.  He  lay  for  some  moments,  his 
face  towards  the  ceiling,  without  either  of 
us  speaking.  Presently  he  inquired,  *  Billy' 
— he  always  called  me  by  that  name — 'how 
long  have  we  been  together.^'  'Over  six- 
teen years,'  I  answered.  'We've  never  had 
a  cross  word  in  all  that  time,  have  we.'*' 
.  .  .  He  gathered  a  bundle  of  papers  and 
books  he  wished  to  take  with  him,  and 
started  to  go;  but,  before  leaving,  he  made 
the  strange  request  that  the  sign-board 
which  swung  on  its  rusty  hinges  at  the  foot 
of  the  stairway  should  remain.  'Let  it 
hang  there,'  he  said,  with  a  significant  low- 
ering of  the  voice.  'Give  our  clients  to  un- 
derstand that  the  election  of  a  President 

102 


-/fxAjU^j/ii/u.  lie,,  '^hviy  :i6.  /9to 

*^  OyOCjL/fJC'   ■^^Hf     /Ti,^7vvJv.,a-/Cc<iw»    ff^.  ^f,  „^.^^ 
(/^     ,3ii<.->--1.<,c>E-v-e*>      t^C~    i-i^      ^^^""^      /tj2-vZn_ 

Fac-simile  of  Lincoln's  letter  of  acceptance 


WHY  WE  LOVE  LINCOLN 

makes  no  change  in  the  firm  of  Lincoln  & 
Herndon.  If  I  live,  I  am  coming  back 
some  time,  and  then  we'll  go  right  on  prac- 
tising law  as  if  nothing  had  happened.'  He 
lingered  for  a  moment,  as  if  to  take  a 
last  look  at  the  old  quarters,  and  then  he 
passed  through  the  door  into  the  narrow 
hallway." 

On  the  day  Lincoln  left  Springfield  to 
take  the  oath  of  oflBce  at  Washington  he 
stood  in  a  cold  rain  on  the  rear  end  of  the 
train  that  was  to  take  him  away,  and  ad- 
dressed a  bareheaded  crowd.  His  face 
worked  with  emotion.  His  lips  trembled 
and  his  voice  shook.  His  eyes  sought  the 
faces  of  his  old  neighbors  with  a  new  sad- 
ness. 

*' To-day  I  leave  you,"  he  said,  bending 
his  tall,  ugly  figure,  as  if  in  benediction.  *'I 
go  to  assume  a  task  more  difficult  than  that 
which  devolved  upon  Washington.  Unless 
the  great  God  who  assisted  him  shall  be  with 
me  and  aid  me,  I  must  fail." 

103 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

Strong  men  in  the  crowd  wept. 

"But  if  the  same  omniscient  mind  and 
almighty  arm  that  directed  and  protected 
him  shall  guide  and  support  me,  I  shall  not 
fail — I  shall  succeed." 

The  long  arms  and  bony  hands  were  ex- 
tended. The  crooked  mouth  quivered,  the 
gray  eyes  were  moist,  and  the  tall  figure 
seemed  to  grow  taller. 

"Let  us  all  pray  that  the  God  of  our  fath- 
ers may  not  forsake  us  now." 

With  that  prayer  on  his  lips  Lincoln  went 
on  his  way  to  Washington  through  many  a 
cheering  multitude  that  uncovered  as  the 
train  passed. 

He  made  speeches  at  Indianapolis,  Co- 
lumbus, Steubenville,  Pittsburg,  Cleveland, 
Buffalo,  Albany  and  New  York.  He  begged 
the  American  people  to  be  patient.  No 
blood  would  be  shed  unless  the  government 
was  compelled  to  act  in  self-defense.  There 
would  be  no  "coercion"  or  "invasion"  of 
the  South,  but  the  United  States  would  re- 

104 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

take  its  own  forts  and  other  property  and 
collect  duties  on  importations.  In  Cincin- 
nati Lincoln  spoke  to  the  South,  which  was 
reviling  him  and  defying  the  national  au- 
thority, in  terms  that  prove  how  eager  he 
was  to  avert  armed  conflict: 

*'We  mean  to  leave  you  alone,  and  in  no 
way  interfere  with  your  institutions;  to 
abide  by  all  and  every  compromise  of  the 
Constitution;  and,  in  a  word,  coming  back 
to  the  original  proposition,  to  treat  you,  so 
far  as  degenerate  men — if  we  have  degener- 
ated— may,  according  to  the  examples  of 
those  noble  fathers,  Washington,  Jefferson 
and  Madison.  We  mean  to  remember  that 
you  are  as  good  as  we  are;  that  there  is  no 
difference  between  us  other  than  the  differ- 
ence of  circumstances.  We  mean  to  recog- 
nize and  bear  in  mind  always  that  you  have 
as  good  hearts  in  your  bosoms  as  other  peo- 
ple, or  as  we  claim  to  have,  and  to  treat  you 
accordingly." 

It  took  a  great  soul  in  a  man  of  Lincoln's 

105 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

heroic  origin,  direct  methods,  intense  pa- 
triotism and  deep  hatred  of  slavery  to  speak 
in  such  terms  to  rebelUon. 

The  time  came  when  he  hurled  a  million 
armed  men  against  the  insurgent  South, 
when  with  a  stroke  of  his  pen  he  set  free 
four  millions  of  slaves,  representing  a  prop- 
erty value  of  about  two  and  a  half  billion 
dollars;  and  when,  with  fire  and  sword  and 
the  expenditure  of  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
lives  and  billions  on  billions  of  treasure,  he 
proved  to  the  world  that  democratic  insti- 
tutions were  strong  enough  to  resist  the 
mightiest  shocks  of  civil  war. 

But  as  he  moved  on  to  the  scene  of  his 
great  ordeal  in  Washington,  there  was  noth- 
ing but  temperate  reason,  kindness  and 
peace  on  his  lips. 

It  must  not  be  forgotten  that  the  tall, 
gawky,  sad-faced  lawyer  in  ill-fitting  fu- 
nereal black,  was  no  limp-limbed  product  of 
sedentary  sentimentalism,  but  a  man  with 
muscles   of   steel,    who   had   thrashed   and 

106 


WHY  WE   LOVE  LINCOLN 

cowed  the  most  dreaded  desperadoes  of  the 
frontier,  a  self-made  son  of  the  wilderness, 
who  had  battled  against  floods,  famines  and 
wild  beasts;  and  who  had  in  him  the  stout 
heart  and  steady  will  of  the  cabin-born  and 
forest-bred.  Lincoln  was  incapable  of  fear, 
save  the  fear  of  folly  or  injustice.  He  was 
not  afraid  even  of  ridicule,  that  poisoned 
weapon  before  which  so  many  strong  men 
tremble. 

As  the  nation  prepared  to  honor  the  hun- 
dredth anniversary  of  his  birth,  well  might 
it  remember  him,  newly  separated  from  his 
provincial  and  rude,  but  heroic  West,  ad- 
vancing between  the  haggard  passions  of  a 
divided  country  with  firm,  brotherly  hands 
held  out  to  the  whole  people. 

In  Philadelphia  he  was  told  by  Allan 
Pinkerton,  the  detective,  that  there  was  a 
conspiracy  to  murder  him  when  he  reached 
Baltimore.  Unless  he  agreed  to  make  the 
rest  of  the  journey  secretly  he  could  not 
reach  Washington  alive.     He  was  urged  not 

107 


WHY  WE  LOVE  LINCOLN 

to  expose  himself  again  in  public,  but  to  go 
right  on  to  his  destination  at  once. 

With  this  knowledge  of  his  peril,  he  as- 
sisted in  the  raising  of  a  new  flag  over  Inde- 
pendence Hall  that  day,  and  delivered  a 
noble  address,  in  which  he  recalled  the  sen- 
timent in  the  Declaration  of  Independence 
"which  gave  promise  that  in  due  time  the 
weights  should  be  lifted  from  the  shoulders 
of  all  men,  and  that  all  should  have  an  equal 
chance." 

"Now,  my  friends,"  he  cried,  his  shrill 
voice  ringing  to  the  outer  edge  of  the  ex- 
cited multitude,  "can  this  country  be  saved 
on  that  basis?  If  it  can,  I  will  consider  my- 
self one  of  the  happiest  men  in  the  world  if 
I  can  help  to  save  it.  .  .  .  But  if  this 
country  cannot  be  saved  without  giving  up 
that  principle,  I  was  about  to  say  that  I 
would  rather  be  assassinated  on  this  spot. 
.  .  .  I  have  said  nothing  but  what  I  am 
willing  to  live  by,  and,  if  it  be  the  pleasure 
of  Almighty  God,  to  die  by." 

108 


Mrs.  Abraham  Lincoln 


V 


WHY  WE  LOVE  LINCOLN 

With  assassins  waiting  in  Baltimore  to 
save  the  cause  of  slavery  and  disunion  by 
striking  down  the  President-elect,  Lincoln, 
by  a  secret  change  of  plan,  managed  to  reach 
Washington  in  safety. 


109 


XI 

A  LL  the  way  from  Springfield  Lincoln 
/~\  carried  a  small  handbag  containing 
the  manuscript  of  his  inaugural 
address,  upon  which  it  was  believed  that 
the  issue  of  peace  or  war  would  depend. 
The  whole  country  waited  anxiously  to  hear 
what  the  rail-splitter  had  to  say,  now  that 
he  had  command  of  the  army,  navy  and 
treasury. 

Would  he  dare  to  send  troops  to  the  rescue 
of  Major  Anderson  and  his  men,  besieged 
in  Charleston  harbor  by  rebellious  South 
Carolina? 

Would  he  relieve  the  loyal  garrisons 
hemmed  in  by  insurgent  Florida? 

To  use  force  meant  instant  civil  war.  To 
refrain  from  using  force  meant  the  destruc- 
tion of  the  Union. 

Only    three    months    before,    Mr.    Holt, 

110 


WHY  WE  LOVE   LINCOLN 

Buchanan's  loyal  Postmaster  General,  had 
written  to  one  of  Lincoln's  partners: 

*'I  doubt  not,  from  the  temper  of  the 
public  mind,  that  the  Southern  States  will 
be  allowed  to  withdraw  peacefully;  but 
when  the  work  of  dismemberment  begins, 
we  shall  break  up  the  fragments  from  month 
to  month,  with  the  nonchalance  with  which 
we  break  the  bread  upon  our  breakfast 
table.  .  .  .  We  shall  soon  grow  up  a 
race  of  chieftains  who  will  rival  the  political 
bandits  of  South  America  and  Mexico,  who 
will  carve  out  to  us  our  miserable  heritage 
with  their  bloody  swords.  The  masses  of 
the  people  dream  not  of  these  things.  They 
suppose  the  Republic  can  be  destroyed  to- 
day, and  that  peace  will  smile  over  its  ruins 
to-morrow." 

Away  out  in  his  Illinois  home  Lincoln  had 
written  these  words  in  his  inaugural  ad- 
dress : 

*'In  your  hands,  my  dissatisfied  fellow- 
countrymen,  and  not  in  mine,  is  the  mo- 

111 


WHY  WE  LOVE  LINCOLN 

mentous  issue  of  civil  war.  The  govern- 
ment will  not  assail  you.  You  can  have  no 
conflict  without  being  yourselves  the  ag- 
gressors. You  have  no  oath  registered  in 
heaven  to  destroy  the  government,  while  / 
shall  have  the  most  solemn  one  to  'preserve, 
protect  and  defend  it.'" 

This  was  the  spirit  in  which  he  made  that 
journey  from  the  West,  knowing  that  the 
question  of  war  or  peace  hung  as  upon  a 
hair  trigger.  Backwoodsman  and  provin- 
cial though  he  might  be,  he  knew  the  under- 
lying American  character  well  enough  to 
hope,  in  his  own  heart,  in  spite  of  the  seces- 
sion of  so  many  States,  what  was  bluntly 
said  to  Jefferson  Davis  and  his  Cabinet: 
"Unless  you  sprinkle  blood  in  the  face  of 
the  people  of  Alabama,  they  will  be  back  in 
the  old  Union  in  less  than  ten  days." 

But  when  Lincoln  went  through  the 
guarded  streets  of  Washington  to  the  bay- 
onet-girt Capitol,  to  have  the  pro-slavery 
Chief  Justice  administer  the  oath  of  office, 

112 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

the  speech  he  carried  in  his  pocket  had  been 
greatly  altered.  He  had  even  been  per- 
suaded by  Mr.  Seward,  his  new  Secretary 
of  State,  to  modify  this  brave  sentence: 

'*A11  the  power  at  my  disposal  will  be 
used  to  reclaim  the  public  property  and 
places  which  have  fallen;  to  hold,  occupy 
and  possess  these,  and  all  other  property 
and  places  belonging  to  the  government." 

They  thought  he  might  be  murdered  be- 
fore he  could  take  the  oath.  There  was  ar- 
tillery in  the  streets  and  ominous  swarms  of 
soldiers.  Even  on  the  roofs  sharpshooters 
were  to  be  seen. 

Grizzled  old  General  Scott  had  sent  this 
word  from  his  sick  bed  to  the  President- 
elect: "I'll  plant  cannon  at  both  ends  of 
Pennsylvania  Avenue,  and  if  any  of  them 
show  their  heads  or  raise  a  finger  I'll  blow 
them  to  hell." 

Yet  when  Lincoln's  long  body  reared  itself 
before  the  hushed  crowd,  and  when  he  laid 
aside  his  new  ebony,  gold-headed  cane,  set 

113 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

his  iron-bound  spectacles  on  his  nose  and 
removed  his  hat — there  was  Douglas,  his  old 
rival  for  Mary  Todd's  hand,  his  competitor 
for  the  Senate  and  the  Presidency,  his  an- 
tagonist in  the  struggle  against  slavery;  but 
a  new  Douglas,  loyal  to  the  Union,  who  was 
content  to  reach  out  his  hand  in  the  pres- 
ence of  that  high-strung  multitude  and  hold 
Lincoln's  hat. 

President  Buchanan  was  there,  withered, 
bent,  slow,  insignificant,  in  flowing  white 
cravat  and  swallowtail  coat.  Beside  him 
towered  the  homely  rail-splitter — also  in  an 
unaccustomed  and  distressing  swallowtail 
coat  and  wearing  a  stubby  new  beard, 
grown  to  please  a  little  girl — who  dared  at 
last  to  give  the  national  authority  a  voice 
and  to  say  that  "No  State,  upon  its  own 
mere  motion,  can  lawfully  get  out  of  the 
Union,"  that  "resolves  and  ordinances  to 
that  effect  are  legally  void,"  and  that  "I 
shall  take  care,  as  the  Constitution  itself 
expressly  enjoins  upon  me,  that  the  laws  of 

114 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

the  Union  be  faithfully  executed  in  all  the 
States." 

How  hard  it  is  for  us  now  to  realize  the 
appalling  strain  of  responsibilities  that  could 
persuade  a  valiant  frontiersman  like  Lin- 
coln— knowing  that  Fort  Sumter  was  al- 
ready besieged;  that  the  Florida  forts  were 
threatened  and  that  an  organized  Confed- 
erate government,  with  drilled  troops,  was 
actually  in  possession  of  many  States — to 
say  so  softly  to  the  armed  and  defiant 
South : 

*'I  trust  that  this  will  not  be  regarded  as  a 
menace,  but  only  as  the  declared  purpose  of 
the  Union  that  it  will  constitutionally  main- 
tain and  defend  itself." 

Just  before  he  closed  his  speech  Lincoln 
looked  up  from  his  manuscript,  and  his  gray 
eyes — those  eyes  that  could  be  so  tender  as 
to  make  his  gaunt  face  beautiful — sought 
the  silent,  listening  crowd.  There  were 
dark  circles  under  his  eyes.  His  whole 
bearing  was  that  of  a  man  in  pain.     Then 

115 


WHY  WE  LOVE  LINCOLN 

he  raised  his  splendid  head  and  made  that 
last  subHme  appeal  against  war: 

*'I  am  loath  to  close.  We  are  not  ene- 
mies, but  friends.  We  must  not  be  enemies. 
Though  passion  may  have  strained,  it  must 
not  break  our  bonds  of  affection.  The  mys- 
tic chords  of  memory,  stretching  from  every 
battlefield  and  patriot  grave  to  every  living 
heart  and  hearthstone  all  over  this  broad 
land,  will  yet  swell  the  chorus  of  the  Union 
when  again  touched,  as  surely  they  will  be, 
by  the  better  angels  of  our  nature." 

As  Lincoln  kissed  the  open  Bible  in  the 
hands  of  Chief  Justice  Taney — who  wrote 
the  Dred  Scott  opinion  supporting  slavery 
— ^the  thunder  of  artillery  announced  his 
vow  to  defend  the  Union. 


116 


XII 

THOSE  who  ,  in  peaceful  times  like 
these  wonder  why  so  strong  and 
direct  a  man  as  Lincoln  should 
have  been  so  eager  to  conciliate  the 
haughty  and  rebellious  Confederacy,  to 
assure  the  rebels  that  there  would  be  no 
'* coercion"  or  "invasion,"  and  to  appeal 
to  their  historic  national  consciousness, 
rather  than  to  tell  them  in  so  many 
words  that  they  would  be  scourged  into 
obedience,  must  consider  that  he  at  last 
realized  the  Southern  misunderstanding  of 
his  purpose  and  temperament  which  caused 
the  Governor  of  Florida  to  write  to  the  Gov- 
ernor of  South  Carolina: 

"If  there  is  sufficient  manliness  at  the 
South  to  strike  for  our  rights,  honor  and 
safety,  in  God's  name  let  it  be  done  before 
the  inauguration  of  Lincoln." 

117 


WHY  WE  LOVE  LINCOLN 

Not  only  that,  but  Mr.  Seward,  the  great 
Repubhcan  leader  of  the  East,  now  Secre- 
tary of  State,  and  one  of  the  deadliest  foes 
of  slavery,  within  three  weeks  wrote  this 
advice : 

^^  Change  the  question  before  the  public 
from  one  upon  slavery,  or  about  slavery,  for 
a  question  upon  union  or  disunion." 

No  man  knew  or  loved  Lincoln  better 
than  Leonard  Sweet,  who  made  this  delib- 
erate analysis  of  him: 

"In  dealing  with  men  he  was  a  trimmer, 
and  such  a  trimmer  the  world  has  never 
seen.  Halifax,  who  was  great  in  his  day  as 
a  trimmer,  would  blush  by  the  side  of  Lin- 
coln; yet  Lincoln  never  trimmed  in  princi- 
pleSy  it  was  only  in  his  conduct  with  men." 

Besides,  Lincoln  was  incapable  of  mere 
hatred.  All  through  the  Civil  War  he 
showed  that  his  love  for  the  whole  Ameri- 
can people  was  tidal.  It  was  his  belief  in 
the  goodness  of  human  nature  and  the  jus- 
tice of  the  Union  cause  that  made  him  grieve 

118 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

like  a  defied  and  deserted  father  over  the 
erring  Southern  insurgents,  and  to  hope, 
with  an  intensity  that  drew  prayer  from  his 
hps,  that  the  ties  of  race,  continental  pride 
and  common  national  memory  would  re- 
unite the  nation  without  the  sacrifice  and 
seal  of  bloodshed. 

It  was  not  for  love  of  the  negro  that  he 
waged  war  upon  slavery,  but  for  the  sake  of 
justice  and  humanity,  and  to  save  the  nation 
from  increasing  degradation  and  demorali- 
zation. True,  he  had  challenged  the  South 
when  he  said,  *'a  house  divided  against  itself 
cannot  stand.  I  believe  this  government 
cannot  endure  permanently  half  slave  and 
half  free."     But  he  had  also  said: 

*' There  is  a  physical  difference  between 
the  white  and  black  races  which  I  believe 
will  forever  forbid  the  two  races  living  to- 
gether on  terms  of  social  and  political  equal- 
ity. And  inasmuch  as  they  cannot  so  live, 
while  they  do  remain  together,  there  must 
be  the  position  of  superior  and  inferior,  and 

119 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

I  as  much  as  any  other  man  am  in  favor  of 
having  the  superior  position  assigned  to  the 
white  race." 

Lincoln's  private  letters  and  conversa- 
tions, from  his  nomination  to  his  election, 
prove  that  there  was  one  point  only  on  which 
he  would  permit  no  compromise — slavery 
must  not  be  extended  to  the  free  territories. 

But  as  President  his  one  supreme  duty 
was  to  save  the  Union,  to  prevent  the  de- 
struction of  the  nation.  He  was  yet  to  write 
amid  the  roar  of  a  conflict  in  which  half  a 
million  lives  were  lost,  that  agonized  but  un- 
flinching letter  to  Horace  Greely: 

"I  would  save  the  Union.  I  would  save 
it  the  shortest  way  under  the  Constitution. 
The  sooner  the  national  authority  can  be 
restored,  the  nearer  the  Union  will  be  'the 
Union  as  it  was.'  If  there  be  those  who 
would  not  save  the  Union  unless  they  could 
at  the  same  time  destroy  slavery,  I  do  not 
agree  with  them.  My  paramount  object  in 
this  struggle  is  to  save  the  Union,  and  is  not 

120 


St.  Gaudens  statue,  Liiifoln  Park,  Chicago 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

either  to  save  or  to  destroy  slavery.  If  I 
could  save  the  Union  without  freeing  any 
slave,  I  would  do  it;  and  if  I  could  save  it 
by  freeing  all  the  slaves,  I  would  do  it;  and 
if  I  could  save  it  by  freeing  some  and  leaving 
others  alone,  I  would  also  do  that.  What  I 
do  about  slavery  and  the  colored  race,  I  do 
because  I  believe  it  helps  to  save  the  Union; 
and  what  I  forbear,  I  forbear  because  I  do 
not  believe  it  would  help  to  save  the  Union.'* 

Those  who  did  not  recognize  the  great- 
ness of  Lincoln  under  his  simple  manners 
and  kindly,  humble  disposition,  assumed 
that  he  would  be  dominated  by  Mr.  Sew- 
ard, his  scholarly  and  distinguished  Secre- 
tary of  State.  The  homespun,  picturesque 
orator  of  Illinois  was  all  very  well  to  catch 
votes.  But  Mr.  Seward  would  be  the  real 
President. 

Mrs.  Lincoln  heard  the  talk  and  men- 
tioned it  to  her  husband. 

*'I  may  not  rule  myself,  but  certainly 
Seward    shall    not,"    said    Lincoln.     *'The 

121 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

only  ruler  I  have  is  my  conscience — follow- 
ing God  in  it — and  these  men  will  have  to 
learn  that  yet." 

John  Hay,  his  secretary  and  bosom  friend, 
who  called  Lincoln  "the  greatest  character 
since  Christ,"  wrote  to  Mr.  Herndon:  "It 
is  absurd  to  call  him  a  modest  man.  No 
great  man  was  ever  modest.  It  was  his  in- 
tellectual arrogance  and  unconscious  as- 
sumption of  superiority  that  men  like  Chase 
and  Sumner  could  never  forgive." 

Still,  even  though  he  stood  rocklike  where 

* 

his  mind  and  conscience  told  him  that  he 
was  right,  a  humbler,  simpler,  more  unaf- 
fected man  never  walked  the  earth;  and 
there  are  libraries  of  books  teeming  with 
tales  of  his  tenderness  to  women,  his  love  of 
little  children,  his  compassion  for  the  unfor- 
tunate. 

The  first  sign  of  the  strong,  sure  Lincoln 
in  the  White  House  came  when  the  new 
President  on  the  day  after  his  inauguration 
received  a  dispatch  from  Major  Anderson 

122 


WHY  WE   LOVE  LINCOLN 

declaring  that  he  was  short  of  provisions, 
that  Fort  Sumter  must  be  abandoned  to  the 
Confederacy  in  a  few  weeks,  and  that  it 
would  take  at  least  twenty  thousand  soldiers 
to  relieve  Charleston  harbor  from  the  Con- 
federate siege.  The  whole  Federal  army 
numbered  only  sixteen  thousand  men. 

Washington  was  filled  with  clamorous 
oflfice  -  seekers  who  crowded  the  White 
House.  The  President  was  distracted. 
Even  his  carriage  was  stopped  by  a  greedy 
applicant,  and  he  was  compelled  to  cry,  "I 
won't  open  shop  in  the  street." 

With  the  secret  news  from  Fort  Sumter 
stirring  his  soul — for  no  one  knew  better  that 
immediate  war  depended  on  his  action — 
Lincoln  told  stories,  cracked  jokes  and  dealt 
with  the  thronging  politicians  in  his  old 
shrewd,  homely  way.  None  of  the  place- 
hunters  was  permitted  to  suspect  the  im- 
pending tragedy  that  made  him  bow  his 
head  when  he  was  alone. 

Meanwhile  he  ordered  General  Scott  to 

123 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

report  what  could  be  done;  but  the  old 
hero  advised  him  that  the  abandonment  of 
Sumter  was  "almost  inevitable."  He  had 
also  ordered  troops  to  be  sent  to  relieve  Fort 
Pickens,  in  Florida,  which  was  also  men- 
aced. General  Scott  reported  that  both 
Pickens  and  Sumter  should  be  evacuated. 

Instantly  the  President  ordered  the  Navy 
Department  to  prepare  plans  for  a  relief 
expedition  for  Fort  Sumter.  That  night  he 
gave  a  great  state  dinner.  His  humorous 
stories  and  quaint  sallies  of  wit  kept  his 
guests  in  high  spirits.  His  lean  face  was 
convulsed  with  laughter,  his  eyes  sparkled 
and  his  thin,  high  voice  whipped  up  the  mer- 
riment. 

But  as  the  night  waned  and  the  laughter 
died  down,  he  called  the  members  of  his 
Cabinet  aside  and,  with  haggard  face  and 
a  voice  of  deep  emotion,  he  told  them  the 
news  from  General  Scott. 

That  night  Lincoln  did  not  close  his  eyes. 
The  next  day,  against  the  advice  of  five  of 

124 


WHY  WE  LOVE  LINCOLN 

his  Cabinet,  including  Mr.  Seward,  all  of 
whom  advised  the  abandonment  of  Fort 
Sumter,  he  ordered  the  preparation  of  a 
naval  expedition  to  relieve  Major  Ander- 
son. Additional  troops  and  supplies  were 
ordered  into  the  beleaguered  Fort  Pickens 
in  Florida. 

The  Confederate  commissioners  might 
seek  conferences  with  Secretary  Seward  in 
vain.  The  expedition  to  rescue  Sumter 
sailed  with  orders  to  deliver  food  to  the  gar- 
rison and,  if  opposed,  to  force  its  way  in. 
Lincoln's  hand  had  signed  the  order  that 
precipitated  the  Civil  War. 

Although  the  President  had  notified  Gov- 
ernor Pickens,  of  South  Carolina,  that  the 
relief  expedition  simply  contemplated  the 
peaceful  delivery  of  provisions  to  a  garrison 
threatened  by  starvation,  the  Confederates 
immediately  demanded  the  surrender  of 
Sumter,  with  a  pledge  from  Major  Anderson 
that  he  should  make  no  preparations  to  in- 
jure the  fort  after  withdrawing.     This  de- 

125 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

mand  was  refused  by  Anderson,  who  added, 
"if  I  can  only  be  permitted  to  leave  on  the 
pledge  you  mention,  I  shall  never,  so  help 
me  God,  leave  this  fort  alive." 

Again  and  again  Anderson  was  called  up- 
on to  surrender  Sumter.  The  Confederates 
were  determined  to  have  the  place  before 
Lincoln's  supplies  arrived.  Each  time  the 
brave  Union  officer  replied  that  he  would 
maintain  his  country's  flag  where  it  flew. 

Then  came  the  crash  which  shook  the  con- 
tinent and  thrilled  the  civilized  world. 

At  daybreak  on  April  12,  1861,  in  the 
presence  of  a  great  multitude  of  civilian  spec- 
tators in  Charleston  harbor,  the  rebel  bat- 
teries opened  fire  on  Fort  Sumter  and  the 
Union.  For  two  days  the  fort  withstood 
the  terrific  bombardment,  and  then,  with  all 
food  gone,  his  quarters  set  on  fire  by  red  hot 
cannon  balls,  and  his  ammunition  almost  ex- 
hausted. Major  Anderson  lowered  the  stars 
and  stripes  to  native-born  Americans  and 
hoisted  the  white  flag. 

126 


WHY  WE  LOVE   LINCOLN 

That  was  on  Saturday.  On  Sunday  Lin- 
coln wrote  a  proclamation  calling  for  seven- 
ty-five thousand  volunteers  to  defend  the 
Union. 

The  same  night  Douglas  called  at  the 
White  House — Douglas,  the  Democratic, 
thundering  Douglas,  the  champion  of  slav- 
ery; Douglas,  the  antagonist  of  Lincoln  in 
almost  every  crisis  of  his  career;  Douglas, 
who  in  the  Senate  only  a  few  weeks  ago  had 
cried,  *'War  is  disunion.  War  is  final,  eter- 
nal separation" — and  Lincoln  clasped  hands 
with  the  brilliant  rival  from  whom  he  had 
won  his  wife  and  the  Presidency,  now  come 
to  pledge  his  life  to  the  defence  of  the  Union. 

On  Monday  morning  Lincoln's  proclama- 
tion and  Douglas's  noble  and  magnanimous 
declaration  that  he  would  support  Lincoln 
in  saving  the  nation  were  read  by  the  Ameri- 
can people. 

To  the  exultant  shout  that  went  up  from 
the  armed  slave  States,  there  came  an  an- 
swering cry  of  rage  and  indignation  from 

127 


WHY  WE  LOVE  LINCOLN 

the  free  States.  The  whole  country  trem- 
bled with  the  war  spmt.  War!  war!  war! 
Every  city,  town  and  village  in  the  North 
answered  Lincoln's  call  for  troops  to  crush 
the  rebellion.  Farms  and  factories  poured 
out  their  men.  Streets  were  gay  with  bunt- 
ing and  noisy  with  marching  feet.  Industry 
was  abandoned  in  the  instant  and  tremen- 
dous preparation  for  the  conflict. 

Yet  Lincoln's  call  for  seventy-five  thousand 
men  was  to  grow  into  a  call  for  a  half  million 
men  and  a  half  billion  dollars,  and  the  strug- 
gle between  the  sixteen  free  States  and  the 
seven  rebellious  slave  States,  with  the  bor- 
der States  hesitating  between,  was  to  change 
into  a  four  years'  death-grapple  between  all 
the  States  of  the  South  and  all  the  States  of 
th'e  North,  a  conflict  without  parallel  in  its 
horror  and  costliness. 

Mr.  Stoddard,  one  of  Lincoln's  private 
secretaries,  thus  described  Lincoln  in  the 
White  House  at  the  beginning  of  the  war: 

"A  remarkably  tall  and  forward-bending 

128 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

form  is  coming  through  the  further  folding 
doors,  leaving  them  carelessly  open  behind 
him.  He  is  walking  slowly,  heavily,  like  a 
man  in  a  dream.  His  strongly  marked  fea- 
tures have  a  drawn  look,  there  are  dark 
circles  under  his  deep-set  eyes,  and  these 
seem  to  be  gazing  at  something  far  away,  or 
into  the  future." 

That  countenance  of  unutterable  sadness, 
fixed  gray  eyes  that  seemed  to  see  something 
in  the  vacant  air;  thin,  stooped  shoulders, 
bowed  head,  hands  clasped  behind  the  back, 
slow,  halting  step  and  general  air  of  weari- 
ness and  melancholy  abstraction,  was  known 
only  to  those  who  saw  Lincoln  when  he 
wrestled  alone  with  the  agony  of  his  burdens. 

The  greedy  crowd  that  pressed  for  office, 
the  impatient  fanatics  who  thrust  their  ad- 
vice upon  him,  the  haughty  statesmen  who 
condescended  to  meddle  with  his  powers, 
the  tricksters  and  traders,  saw  only  the  sim- 
ple, resolute,  vulgar,  kindly  Lincoln,  full 
of    the    old    allure    of    anecdote    and   jest, 

129 


WHY  WE  LOVE  LINCOLN 

patient,  keen  and  ready  in  a  flash  to  avoid 

an  immature  decision  or  soften  a  refusal  by 
a  witty  epigram  or  an  illuminating  joke. 

It  is  an  astonishing  evidence  of  Lincoln's 
complex  character  that  he  could  laugh  and 
play  like  a  careless  boy,  and  patiently  putter 
over  the  small  details  of  oflSce-giving,  while 
the  iron  of  his  character  was  annealing  in 
the  furnace  of  war. 

No  more  sensitive  or  imaginative  man 
than  Lincoln  ever  lived.  His  amazing  sense 
of  humor  stayed  him  in  his  trial.  It  was 
sometimes  Titanic. 

"Has  anything  gone  wrong  at  the  front?" 
asked  a  friend,  seeing  him  downcast. 

"No,"  replied  the  President  with  a  weary 
smile.  "It  isn't  the  war;  it's  the  post  ofiice 
at  Brownsville,  Missouri." 

The  deadly,  ceaseless,  shameless  crowding 
and  intriguing  of  place-hunters — notwith- 
standing the  shock  of  war  that  threatened 
the  nation  itself — made  a  profound  impres- 
sion on  Lincoln. 

130 


WHY  WE   LOVE  LINCOLN 


"This  human  struggle  and  scramble  for 
office,  for  a  way  to  live  without  work,  will 
finally  test  the  strength  of  our  institutions," 
he  said  to  Mr.  Herndon. 

That  has  been  the  idea  of  every  tormented 
President  of  the  United  States,  from  Wash- 
ington to  Roosevelt. 

"He  is  an  old  criminal  lawyer,"  wrote  one 
of  his  secretaries,  "practiced  in  observing 
the  ways  of  rascals,  accustomed  to  reading 
them  and  circumventing  them,  but  he  does 
not  commonly  tell  any  man  precisely  what 
he  thinks  of  him." 

Even  so  able  a  man  as  Secretary  Seward 
did  not  at  first  recognize  the  force,  genius 
and  dignity  that  lay  behind  the  rough, 
whimsical  exterior  of  Lincoln,  and  gave 
himself  the  airs  of  a  superior;  but  presently 
even  Seward  said:  "He  is  the  best  of  us 
all." 

While  the  country  was  ringing  with  the 
sounds  of  marching  men  after  the  fall  of 
Fort  Sumter,  it  was  reported  that  a  great 

131 


WHY  WE  LOVE  LINCOLN 

force  of  Confederates  was  moving  against 
Washington.  There  were  only  four  or  five 
thousand  troops  in  the  capital.  A  Massa- 
chusetts regiment  on  the  way  to  Washing- 
ton had  been  attacked  by  a  mob.  The 
Seventh  Regiment  of  New  York  was  ex- 
pected, but  the  Marylanders  had  torn  up 
the  tracks  and  it  did  not  come.  The  city 
was  in  danger  of  famine.  The  Confederate 
attack  was  hourly  expected.  The  capital 
was  cut  off. 

Lincoln's  anguish  was  unconcealed. 
Walking  up  and  down  his  office,  with  a 
look  of  pain  on  his  face,  he  gave  vent  to  his 
dread. 

"I  begin  to  believe  that  there  is  no  North. 
The  Seventh  Regiment  is  a  myth." 

Again  he  paced  the  floor  for  half  an  hour. 

"Why  don't  they  come.^  Why  don't  they 
come.^"  he  groaned. 

Presently  the  New  Yorkers,  who  had  re- 
built the  tracks  and  bridges  from  Annapolis 
on,  marched  into  Washington,  and  within  a 

132 


Pliotograph  by  Davis  and  Eikemeyer 

This  powerful  and  poetic  head  of  Lincoln,  by  Giitzon  Borglum, 
which  deeply  imj^ressed  the  emancipator's  living  son,  has  been 
presented  to  Congress  by  Eugene  Meyer,  Jr.,  of  New  York 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

week  Lincoln  had  seventeen  thousand  sol- 
diers in  the  city. . 

It  was  this  terror  of  losing  Washing- 
ton that  persuaded  Lincoln  to  withdraw 
McDowell's  forty  thousand  men  from 
McClellan  when  his  army  was  within  sight 
of  Richmond. 


133 


XIII 

IINCOLN'S  tenderness  of  heart  was  one 
^  of  his  striking  traits.  The  story  of 
his  Ufe  is  full  of  touching  incidents 
showing  his  pity  for  all  living  things  in 
distress.  As  a  boy  he  protected  frogs  and 
turtles  from  torture;  as  a  frontiersman  he 
returned  young  birds  to  their  nests,  and 
once  rode  back  on  his  tracks  over  the 
prairie  and  dismounted  to  help  a  pig  stuck 
in  the  mud;  as  President  his  habit  of  par- 
doning soldiers  condemned  to  death  excited 
the  wrath  of  his  generals.  His  heart  melted 
at  the  sight  of  tears.  It  was  hard  for  him 
to  withstand  a  tale  of  woe.  The  shedding 
of  blood  stirred  horror  and  grief  in  him. 

This  extreme  sensitiveness  would  have 
been  an  element  of  almost  fatal  weakness 
in  the  man  upon  whom  events  had  so  sud- 
denly thrust  the  command  of  a  great  war, 
particularly  a  war  between  his  own  country- 

134 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

men,  but  for  the  fact  that  reason  and  devo- 
tion to  justice  were  the  anchors  of  his  nature. 

He  could  not  be  moved  on  a  clear  question 
of  principle  by  either  friendship,  enmity  or 
compassion. 

He  appointed  Edwin  M.  Stanton  as  Sec- 
retary of  War,  in  place  of  the  discredited 
Simon  Cameron,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that 
Stanton  had  treated  him  contemptuously  in 
a  law  case  on  which  they  were  engaged  to- 
gether, and  had  described  him  as  a  "long, 
lank  creature  from  Illinois,  wearing  a  dirty 
linen  duster  for  a  coat,  on  the  back  of  which 
the  perspiration  had  splotched  wide  stains 
that  resembled  a  map  of  the  continent." 

He  raised  George  B.  McClellan  to  com- 
mand the  army,  notwithstanding  the  cir- 
cumstance that  McClellan,  as  vice-president 
of  the  Illinois  Central  Railway,  had  once 
deeply  wounded  him  by  declining  to  pay  his 
lawyer's  bill;  and  that,  in  1858,  while  the 
Illinois  Central  refused  Lincoln  the  most 
common  courtesy,   McClellan  was   accom- 

135 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

panying  his  rival,  Douglas,  in  a  private  car 
and  special  train. 

It  was  not  chivalry,  but  patriotism,  that 
inspired  Lincoln  to  put  these  two  Demo- 
crats in  control  of  the  armed  forces  of  the 
nation.  His  own  feelings  were  nothing; 
the  fate  of  the  Union  was  everything.  Stan- 
ton had  been  an  honest  and  masterful  mem- 
ber of  Buchanan's  Cabinet.  McClellan  had 
made  a  glorious  answer  to  the  Bull  Run 
defeat  by  driving  the  Confederate  troops  out 
of  West  Virginia. 

The  life  of  the  nation  was  more  important 
than  party  lines.  Besides,  Stanton  and  Mc- 
Clellan had  the  confidence  of  the  Demo- 
crats, and  it  was  essential,  not  only  that  the 
whole  North  should  be  held  together,  but 
that  the  loyal  Democrats  in  the  wavering 
border  States  should  feel  that  there  was  no 
sectional  or  party  prejudice  in  the  govern- 
ment. 

Stanton  tried  to  bully  Lincoln  and  called 
him  "the  original  gorilla,"  and  McClellan 

136 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 


treated  him  with  disdainful  indifference. 
Neither  could  exhaust  his  patience.  He 
mastered  his  lion-headed  Secretary  of  War 
by  gentle  persistence.  He  endured  Mc- 
Clellan's  months  of  inactivity  after  the  Army 
of  the  Potomac  had  grown  into  a  fighting 
force  of  nearly  a  hundred  and  seventy  thou- 
sand magnificently  trained  men,  and  when 
the  government  was  being  openly  sneered 
at  for  its  hesitation  to  give  battle. 

Great-hearted,  patient  Lincoln!  He  even 
consented  to  sit  uncomplainingly  in  the 
waitino;  room  of  McClellan's  residence  while 
the  arrogant  young  general  talked  to  others. 

*'I  will  hold  McClellan's  stirrup  if  he  will 
only  bring  success,"  he  said. 

But,  in  the  end,  he  wrote  the  orders  which 
forced  McClellan's  army  against  Richmond ; 
and  when  Fremont,  in  the  West,  ignored 
the  President's  orders  to  fight,  Lincoln 
promptly  removed  him  from  command. 

To  the  newly  assembled  Congress  he 
said: 

137 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

*'This  is  essentially  a  people's  contest. 
On  the  side  of  the  Union  it  is  a  struggle  for 
maintaining  in  the  world  that  form  and  sub- 
stance of  government  whose  leading  object 
is  to  elevate  the  condition  of  men — to  lift 
artificial  weights  from  all  shoulders.  .  .  . 
It  is  now  for  them  [the  people]  to  demon- 
strate to  the  world  that  those  who  can  fairly 
carry  an  election  can  also  suppress  a  rebel- 
lion; that  ballots  are  the  rightful  and 
peaceful  successors  of  bullets;  and  that 
when,  ballots  have  fairly  and  constitution- 
ally decided,  there  can  be  no  successful  ap- 
peal back  to  bullets;  that  there  can  be  no 
successful  appeal  except  to  ballots  them- 
selves at  succeeding  elections." 

To  one  of  the  many  committees  that  went 
to  the  White  House  to  complain  that  the  war 
was  not  being  pressed  rapidly  enough,  he 
suggested  a  question  and  answer  that  were 
repeated  all  over  the  country. 

He  was  tired,  pale,  almost  worn  out. 
The  ceaseless  grind  of  work,  the  frightful 

138 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

and  increasing  responsibilities  imposed  by 
the  war,  the  cruel  jibes  of  critics  all  over 
the  country,  had  deepened  the  furrows  in 
his  brow  and  wasted  his  homely  face.  Every 
mail  brought  threats  of  assassination.  The 
far-away,  rapt  look  in  his  eyes,  the  pitiful 
droop  of  his  strong  mouth,  the  pathetic  slop- 
ing of  his  tall,  black-clad  figure,  gave  evi- 
dence of  the  strain  upon  him. 

"Gentlemen,"  he  said,  with  a  smile  that 
lit  up  his  wonderful  face,  "suppose  all  the 
property  you  were  worth  was  in  gold,  and 
you  had  put  it  in  the  hands  of  Blondin  [the 
famous  tight-rope  walker]  to  carry  across 
the  Niagara  River  on  a  rope.  Would  you 
shake  the  cable,  or  keep  shouting  at  him, 
'Blondin,  stand  up  a  little  straighter — 
Blondin,  stoop  a  little  more — go  a  little 
faster — lean  a  little  more  to  the  north — 
lean  a  little  more  to  the  south'.^  No,  you 
would  hold  your  breath,  as  well  as  your 
tongue,  and  keep  your  hands  off  until  he 
was  safe  over.     The  Government's  carry- 

139 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

ing  an  enormous  weight.  Untold  treasures 
are  in  their  hands.  They  are  doing  the 
best  they  can.  Don't  badger  them.  Keep 
silence,  and  we  will  get  you  safe  across." 

Lincoln  did  not  fight  battles  himself,  but 
he  searched  patiently  for  generals  who 
could,  and  then  he  trusted  them,  and  kept 
the  public  off  their  backs.  As  he  said 
to  General  Grant,  *'If  a  man  can't  skin, 
he  must  hold  a  leg  while  somebody  else 
does." 

Imagine  Lincoln,  in  his  black  frock  coat 
and  high  hat,  stealing  out  of  the  White 
House  in  the  morning  to  kneel  in  the  grass 
on  the  Mall  and  practice  at  a  sheet  of  note 
paper  with  newly-invented  rifles  till  the  in- 
dignant sentries  dash  up  shouting,  to  see 
the  long  figure  unfold  itself  upward  and 
recognize  in  the  disturber  the  President  of 
the  United  States! 

Imagine  him  playing  with  his  children  on 
the  White  House  lawn,  "his  coat-tails  stand- 
ing out  straight  and  his  black  hair  tousled 

140 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 


this   way  and   that"   as  he   dashes   about, 
chased  by  his  shrieking  playmates! 

Imagine  him  again  and  again  asking  httle 
girls  to  kiss  him,  snatching  them  to  his  thin 
breast,  fondling  them  with  tears  in  his 
eyes! 

Imagine  him  watching  through  weary 
nights  by  his  son's  deathbed,  standing 
stricken  beside  the  little  coffin,  and  then, 
for  the  first  time,  turning  to  the  Bible  for 
consolation ! 

Imagine  him  entertaining  his  log-cabin 
cousin,  Dennis  Hanks,  in  the  White  House, 
and,  when  that  simple  soul  disapproves  of 
Secretary  Stanton's  arrogance  and  urges 
him  to  "kick  the  frisky  little  Yankee  out," 
patiently  answering,  "It  would  be  difficult 
to  find  another  man  to  fill  his  place"! 

Imagine  him  sitting  in  his  nightshirt  on 
the  edge  of  young  John  Hay's  bed,  night 
after  night,  reading  doggerel  verses  from  the 
newspapers,  cracking  jokes  or  reciting  from 
Shakespeare ! 

141 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

Imagine  him  signing  a  pardon  for  a  young 
soldier  sentenced  to  be  shot  and  hearing  the 
sobs  of  that  mother  waiting  outside,  "Thank 
God!  Thank  Lincoln!  Pardoned!  Oh, 
my  boy!   my  boy!" 

Imagine  him  facing  the  gray-haired  father 
of  another  doomed  soldier  and  saying.  "If 
your  son  lives  until  I  order  him  shot,  he  will 
live  longer  than  ever  Methuselah  did"! 

Imagine  him  sitting  at  the  table  day  after 
day,  his  face  cold,  abstracted,  his  gray  eyes 
*' seeing  something  in  the  air"  and  hardly 
touching  his  food! 

Imagine  him  on  the  night  after  the  bloody 
loss  of  Chancellorsville — seventeen  thousand 
killed,  wounded  and  missing!  Mr.  Stod- 
dard, sitting  in  the  deserted  White  House, 
underneath  Lincoln's  room,  has  helped  our 
imagination : 

"But  that  sound,  the  slow,  heavy,  regular 
tread  of  the  President's  feet,  pacing  up  and 
down  in  his  room  and  thinking  of  Chancel- 
lorsville !     A  man's  tread  may  well  be  heavy 

142 


Life  mask  of  Lincoln  while  President.  Observe  the  wasted 
features,  the  kindly,  humorous  mouth,  and  the  reverential 
indications  of  the  high  top  head 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

when  there  is  such  a  load  upon  his  shoulders 
as  Lincoln  is  carrying.  ...  He  can 
hear,  in  his  heart,  the  thunder  of  the  Union 
and  Confederate  guns,  and  the  shrieks  and 
groans  that  rise  on  the  lost  battlefield.  .  .  . 
Ten  o'clock — and  now  and  then  there  have 
been  momentary  breaks,  as  if  he  paused  in 
turning  at  the  wall ;  but  no  pause  has  lasted 
longer  than  for  a  few  heart-beats.  .  .  . 
Eleven  o'clock — and  it  is  as  if  a  more  silent 
kind  of  silence  had  been  obtained,  for  the 
tread  can  be  heard  more  distinctly,  and  a 
sort  of  thrill  comes  with  it  now  and  then. 
.  .  .  There  has  been  no  sound  from  the 
President's  room  for  a  number  of  minutes, 
and  he  may  be  resting  in  his  chair  or  writ- 
ing. No ;  there  it  comes  again,  that  mourn- 
fully monotonous  tread,  with  its  turnings 
at  the  wall.  .  .  .  Two  o'clock  comes, 
without  another  break  in  the  steady  tramp 
of  Lincoln's  lonely  vigil.  Three  o'clock  ar- 
rives, and  your  task  is  done,  and  you  pass 
out  almost  stealthily     .     .     .     and  the  last 

143 


WHY  WE   LOVE  LINCOLN 


sound  in  your  ears  is  the  muffled  beat  of 
that  footfall. 

Before  eight  o'clock  of  the  morning  you 
are  once  more  at  the  White  House  .  .  . 
look  in  at  the  President's  room.  ...  He 
is  still  there,  and  there  is  nothing  to  indicate 
that  he  has  been  out  of  it.  .  .  .  There 
upon  the  table,  beside  his  cup  of  coffee,  lies 
the  draft  of  his  fresh  instructions  to  General 
Hooker,  bidding  him  to  push  forward  with- 
out any  reference  to  Chancellorsville." 

These  are  but  fragmentary  glimpses  of 
the  savior  of  the  Union  in  his  many-sided 
life  during  the  war.  But  they  help  us  to 
understand  him  in  that  tragic  stretch  of  time 
when  he  plodded  wearily  between  the  White 
House  and  the  telegraph  room  in  the  War 
Department  to  learn,  day  by  day,  what  his 
generals  at  the  front  had  to  say. 

It  would  be  but  vain  repetition  to  picture 
him  in  silent,  white-faced  anguish,  or  in 
equally  silent  transports  of  joy  and  thanks- 
giving,   all    through    the    fighting    days    of 

144 


WHY  WE  LOVE   LINCOLN 

Shiloh,  Stone  River,  Fredericksburg,  Antie- 
tam,  Gettysburg,  Vicksburg,  Chickamauga, 
the  Wilderness,  Spottsylvania  and  Peters- 
burg, when  Americans  reddened  American 
soil  with  the  blood  of  Americans,  and  the 
ordinary  dress  of  women  and  children 
throughout  the  country  turned  to  black. 

They  said  of  him  that  he  sometimes 
cracked  jokes,  Nero-like,  while  the  conti- 
nent shuddered  at  the  slaughter  of  its 
bravest  and  best,  and  while  the  fate  of  the 
Union  hung  trembling  in  the  balance. 

*'I  must  laugh  or  I  will  surely  die,"  hie 
explained  to  John  Hay. 


145 


XIV 

To  Lincoln  the  preservation  of  the 
Union  was  of  much  greater  im- 
portance than  the  freedom  of  the 
negro  race. 

No  one  who  has  ever  glanced  through  his 
speeches  and  writings  can  have  any  doubt 
about  that. 

When  he  signed  the  Proclamation  of 
Emancipation  he  did  it  solely  to  save  the 
Union.  It  was  his  mind,  rather  than  his 
heart,  that  inspired  the  deed;  for  his  incli- 
nation was  to  recognize  the  constitutional 
property  right  in  slaves  and  to  secure  their 
emancipation  by  paying  for  them. 

This  reverence  for  the  Constitution  and 
defense  of  all  its  guarantees  and  sanctions, 
even  when  the  argument  advantaged  those 
who  raised  their  hands  against  the  govern- 
ment, is  not  the  least  of  Lincoln's  claim  to 
the  love  and  gratitude  of  his  countrymen. 

146 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

Not  even  the  monstrous  emotions  of  a  frat- 
ricidal war  could  shake  his  determination  to 
recognize  slavery  as  a  property  right  con- 
firmed by  the  nation,  so  long  as  the  nation 
itself  could  survive.  Nor  could  the  alter- 
nate appeals  and  abuse  of  the  New  England 
abolitionist  fanatics  make  him  forget  that 
the  rebel  South  was  defending  what  it  be- 
lieved to  be  its  legal  rights. 

There  is  not  a  single  note  of  bitterness  or 
hatred  for  the  South  in  all  that  he  said  or 
wrote  up  to  the  day  when  a  Southern  hand 
struck  down  the  South's  best  friend. 

The  time  came,  however,  when  there  was 
no  longer  any  hope  that  emancipation  by 
compensation  would  be  accepted  as  a  means 
of  restoring  peace. 

Then,  and  then  only,  Lincoln  considerea 
unconditional  emancipation  as  an  act  of  war 
in  defence  of  the  Union  and  as  a  means  of 
peace. 

Thirty  -  four  years  afterwards  General 
Longstreet,  one  of  the  most  distinguished 

147 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

soldiers  of  the  Confederacy,  stood  before 
thousands  of  Union  veterans  in  Atlanta, 
white-haired  and  shaking  with  emotion,  and 
said: 

"Your  loss  would  have  been  our  loss  and 
your  gain  has  been  our  gain." 

The  President  had  held  out  as  long  as  pos- 
sible against  what  he  afterwards  considered 
"the  central  act  of  his  administration  and 
the  greatest  event  of  the  nineteenth  century." 
To  members  of  Congress  who  urged  him  to 
free  the  negroes  and  muster  them  into  the 
army  he  made  a  military  argument: 

"Gentlemen,  I  have  put  thousands  of 
muskets  into  the  hands  of  loyal  citizens  of 
Tennessee,  Kentucky  and  North  Carolina. 
They  have  said  that  they  could  defend  them- 
selves if  they  had  guns.  I  have  given  them 
the  guns.  Now,  these  men  do  not  believe 
in  mustering  in  the  negro.  If  I  do  it,  these 
thousands  of  muskets  will  be  turned  against 
us.  We  should  lose  more  than  we  should 
gain." 

148 


C^tv  /t-cf^  ayr^^^  ,4^c^j~t^  ^e^a-xj  o-^    ju^ ^-^^^ 
jti^ZI^    iyT^t^oAj^  '(^■izXj  rh^elll^^^i^,  err  a^ 'rxs:^ 

a^.u>u.,y>~>j    Olfv  a^  /y-'JiX:  ^s,  (^  <>AA^:z;  ^r^^tfH^ ^luu<^ 

/l^^-c-o     -j^    ;C5C*'-'    e^Tiu    -TuS^KJ    a,-e.yv~tj  ^^£^ ^■<'r<t 
fKevt^  /r>«js7  ts/Aft^   t^fCw  txici^  -^SLuo     ocCtrf  ■r&^i.i 

Autograph  copy  of  Lincoln's  speech  at  Gettysburg 


WHY   WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

On  July  22,  1862,  Lincoln  called  his  Cab- 
inet together  and  read  to  them  a  draft  of  a 
proposed  proclamation  freeing  all  the  slaves 
in  the  United  States. 

Secretary  Seward,  however,  advised  de- 
lay, pointing  out  the  fact  that  the  Union 
arms  had  sustained  repeated  defeats,  and 
that  a  proclamation  of  emancipation,  issued 
at  such  a  time,  might  be  *' viewed  as  the  last 
measure  of  an  exhausted  government."  He 
advised  the  President  to  wait  until  a  victory 
was  won  and  then  "give  it  to  the  country 
supported  by  military  success."  Lincoln 
consented  to  wait. 

How  the  anti-slavery  forces  bellowed  and 
threatened!  How  Wendell  Phillips  lashed 
the  President!  How  Greeley  scored  him  in 
the  Tribune!  How  the  abolitionist  commit- 
tees poured  into  the  White  House  and  raged 
against  delay! 

Poor  Lincoln!  He  who  had  scoffed  and 
blasphemed  in  his  rough,  hard  youth  in  New 
Salem,  turned  to  God  for  guidance.     There 

149 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

is  nothing  in  history  more  touching  than 
the  spectacle  of  this  strong  man,  strugghng 
between  his  sense  of  duty  and  the  pitiless 
clamor  of  his  country,  raising  his  soul  like  a 
child  to  its  father. 

And  while  he  communed  with  God  he  did 
not  fail  to  use  all  the  resources  of  his  nature 
to  find  a  safe,  sure  way  for  the  Republic  he 
loved  so  well.  He  drew  strength  from  God, 
but  he  continued  to  observe,  compare  and 
analyze  conditions.  A  Chicago  delegation 
went  to  him  and  declared  that  it  was  God's 
will  that  he  should  free  the  slaves.  Lincoln 
drew  himself  up  and  said: 

"I  hope  it  will  not  be  irreverent  for  me  to 
say  that  if  it  is  probable  that  God  would 
reveal  His  will  to  others  on  a  point  so  con- 
nected with  my  duty,  it  might  be  supposed 
He  would  reveal  it  directly  to  me.  .  .  . 
These  are  not,  however,  the  days  of  mira- 
cles, and  I  suppose  it  will  be  granted  that  I 
am  not  to  expect  a  direct  revelation.  I  must 
study  the  plain  physical  facts  of  the  case, 

150 


WHY  WE  LOVE   LINCOLN 

ascertain  what  is  possible,  and  learn  what 
appears  to  be  wise  and  right." 

The  signal  that  Lincoln  waited  for  came 
on  September  17,  1862,  when  McClellan  de- 
feated Lee's  army  at  Antietam,  inflicting  a 
loss  of  more  than  twenty-five  thousand  men 
in  killed,  wounded  and  missing. 

Then  came  one  of  the  strangest  sights  in 
the  life  of  the  American  government,  a  spec- 
tacle that  reveals  the  profoundly  mystic  side 
of  Lincoln. 

The  Cabinet  was  called  together  again  to 
consider  a  proclamation  of  emancipation. 

There  was  Stanton,  the  Secretary  of  War, 
short,  deep-chested,  thick-bearded,  dog- 
matic; Chase,  the  Secretary  of  the  Treas- 
ury, tall,  shaven,  dignified,  learned,  able; 
Seward,  the  Secretary  of  State,  slim,  erect, 
hawk-eyed,  polished,  haughty;  white- 
bearded  Welles,  the  Secretary  of  the  Navy; 
tall,  courtly  Blair,  the  Postmaster  General; 
heavy-faced,  ponderous  Smith,  the  Secre- 
tary of   the   Interior;    and   silent,   shrewd, 

151 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

studious  Bates,  the  snowy-headed  Attorney 
General. 

When  this  group  of  hard-headed  and  ex- 
perienced poHticians  was  solemnly  gathered 
around  the  table  in  the  Cabinet  room,  Lin- 
coln opened  a  humorous  book  by  Artemus 
Ward  and  began  to  read  a  chapter  in  his 
shrill,  singsongy  voice,  pausing  now  and 
then  to  join  the  chuckling  of  his  hearers. 

Stanton  alone  sat  with  thunder  in  his  eyes 
and  a  frown  on  his  brow.  The  tendency  of 
the  President  to  relieve  a  strain  on  the 
nerves,  or  clear  the  mind  by  a  good  laugh, 
exasperated  him  to  the  point  of  fury. 

Suddenly  the  laughter  vanished  from  Lin- 
coln's voice  and  there  came  into  his  strong 
face  the  look  that  he  is  remembered  by  in 
his  greatest  moods. 

Then  he  poured  out  his  mind  and  soul. 
In  a  few  words  he  announced  that  he  had 
decided  to  emancipate  the  slaves  by  procla- 
mation, and  explained  his  reasons.  Look- 
ing earnestly  into  the  faces  of  his  advisers,  he 

152 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

informed  them  that  he  had  left  the  decision 
to  God,  that  he  had  made  a  promise  to  God, 
and  that  he  would  keep  that  promise. 

Think  of  President  Roosevelt  making  such 
a  statement  to  Secretary  Root,  Secretary 
Cortelyou,  Secretary  Wright,  Attorney  Gen- 
eral Bonaparte  and  the  other  members  of 
his  Cabinet! 

There  was  no  self-consciousness  in  Lin- 
coln's manner  as  he  made  this  extraordinary 
avowal.  He  spoke  simply  and  with  an  air 
of  intense  conviction.  His  soul  was  in  his 
eyes.     There  was  peace  in  his  face. 

"He  remarked,"  wrote  Secretary  Welles 
that  night,  "that  he  had  made  a  vow — a  cov- 
enant— that  if  God  gave  us  the  victory  in  the 
approaching  battle  [Antietam]  he  would  con- 
sider it  an  indication  of  Divine  will,  and  that 
it  was  duty  to  move  forward  in  the  cause  of 
emancipation.  It  might  be  thought  strange, 
he  said,  that  he  had  in  this  way  submitted 
the  disposal  of  matters  when  the  way  was 
not  clear  to  his  mind  what  he  should  do. 

153 


WHY  WE  LOVE  LINCOLN 

God  had  decided  this  question  in  favor  of  the 
slaves.  He  was  satisfied  it  was  right — was 
confirmed  and  strengthened  in  his  action  by 
the  vow  and  the  results.  His  mind  was 
fixed,  his  decision  made,  but  he  wished  his 
paper  announcing  his  course  as  correct  in 
terms  as  it  could  be  made  without  any 
change  in  his  determination." 

What  a  scene! — the  master  politician  of 
his  times,  the  ugly  rail-splitter  and  country 
politician,  whose  very  appearance  excited 
smiles,  surrounded  by  shrewd,  calculating, 
learned,  world-hardened  men,  and  telling 
them  gravely  that  he  had  left  to  the  decision 
of  God  the  question  of  banishing  slavery 
from  American  soil. 

It  was  so  impressive,  so  extraordinary, 
that  even  Secretary  Chase  wrote  it  all  down 
as  soon  as  he  got  home.  Here  is  his  state- 
ment of  Lincoln's  words: 

'*When  the  rebel  army  was  at  Frederick, 
I  determined,  as  soon  as  it  should  be  driven 
out  of  Maryland,  to  issue  a  proclamation  of 

154 


F 


Lincoln  statue,  E.  Capitol  and  Thirteenth  Street,  Washington 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

emancipation,  such  as  I  thought  most  Hkely 
to  be  useful.  I  said  nothing  to  any  one,  but 
I  made  the  promise  to  myself,  and  (hesitat- 
ing a  little)  to  my  Maker.  The  rebel  army 
is  now  driven  out,  and  I  am  going  to  fulfill 
that  promise.  I  have  got  you  together  to 
hear  what  I  have  written  down.  I  do  not 
wish  your  advice  about  the  main  matter,  for 
that  I  have  determined  for  myself.  This  I 
say  without  intending  anything  but  respect 
for  any  one  of  you.  .  .  .  There  is  no 
way  in  which  I  can  have  any  other  man  put 
where  I  am.  I  am  here ;  I  must  do  the  best 
I  can,  and  bear  the  responsibility  of  taking 
the  course  which  I  feel  I  ought  to  take." 

There  was  nothing  Oriental  about  Lin- 
coln. He  made  much  of  human  wisdom. 
He  listened  reverently  to  the  voice  of  the 
people.  He  bowed  to  the  Constitution,  in 
spite  of  the  sanctions  it  gave  to  slavery,  be- 
cause it  represented  the  deliberate  will  of 
the  majority. 

But  that  incomparable  hour  in  the  White 

155 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

House  proves  that  in  the  stress  of  contend- 
ing human  passions,  almost  crushed  by  the 
weight  of  his  office,  with  heart  and  mind 
overwhelmed,  Lincoln  turned  from  earth  to 
Heaven,  and,  like  Elijah  on  Mount  Carmel 
among  the  priests  of  Baal,  cried  to  God  for  a 
sign.  "The  God  that  answereth  by  fire,  let 
him  be  God." 

As  Secretary  Seward  put  the  Proclamation 
of  Emancipation  in  his  pocket  and  the  mem- 
bers of  the  Cabinet  withdrew  from  the  most 
thrilling  council  ever  known  in  that  place, 
Lincoln's  countenance  was  calmer  than  it 
had  been  for  many  weeks. 

The  proclamation  freeing  all  slaves  in 
rebellious  States,  together  with  a  plan  for 
emancipation  by  compensation,  was  submit- 
ted to  Congress.  To  the  very  last  Lincoln 
hoped  that  the  South  might  accept  his  plan 
to  abolish  slavery  by  paying  for  the  slaves. 
His  appeal  to  Congress  was  notable: 

*'The  fiery  trial  through  which  we  pass 
will  light  us  down,  in  honor  or  dishonor,  to 

156 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

the  latest  generation.  We  say  we  are  for 
the  Union.  The  world  will  not  forget  that 
we  say  this.  We  know  how  to  save  the 
Union.  The  world  knows  that  we  do  know 
how  to  save  it.  We — even  we  here — hold 
the  power  and  bear  the  responsibility.  In 
giving  freedom  to  the  slave,  we  assure  free- 
dom to  the  free — honorable  in  what  we  give 
and  what  we  preserve.  We  shall  nobly  save 
or  meanly  lose  the  last,  best  hope  of  earth." 
On  January  1,  1863,  Lincoln  issued  the 
proclamation  that  ended  slavery  forever  un- 
der the  American  flag. 


157 


XV 

WEARYING  of  McClellan's  delays 
and  excuses  for  not  fighting, 
Lincoln  removed  him  and  put 
Burnside  in  command  of  the  Army  of  the 
Potomac.  When  Burnside  fought  at  Fred- 
ericksburg the  President  appeared  at  the 
War  Department  telegraph  office  in  carpet 
slippers  and  dressing  gown,  and  waited 
all  day  without  food  for  the  shocking  news 
of  defeat  that  did  not  come  until  four 
o'clock  the  next  morning — ^ten  thousand 
dead  and  wounded. 

The  President  calmly  endured  the  general 
abuse  that  followed  this  disaster.  Then  he 
removed  Burnside  and  put  General  Hooker 
in  his  place,  writing  to  him  these  character- 
istic words: 

"I  have  heard,  in  such  a  way  as  to  believe 
it,  of  your  recently  saying  that  both  the  army 

158 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

and  the  government  needed  a  dictator.  Of 
course  it  was  not  for  this,  but  in  spite  of  it, 
that  I  have  given  you  the  command.  Only 
those  generals  who  gain  successes  can  set 
up  dictators.  What  I  now  ask  of  you  is 
military  success,  and  I  will  risk  the  dicta- 
torship." 

Lincoln  went  to  Hooker's  army  and  re- 
viewed it.  As  the  hundred  thousand  men 
marched  by  they  watched  him  eagerly  as  he 
sat  on  his  horse,  tall„  angular  and  in  black 
frock  coat,  among  the  glittering  generals. 
Seymour  Dodd  has  described  the  scene: 

"None  of  us  to  our  dying  day  can  forget 
that  countenance!  From  its  presence  we 
marched  directly  onward  toward  our  camp, 
and  as  soon  as  route  step  was  ordered  and 
the  men  were  free  to  talk,  they  spoke  thus  to 
each  other:  *Did  you  ever  see  such  a  look 
on  any  man's  face  ? '  '  He  is  bearing  the  bur- 
dens of  the  nation.'  *It  is  an  awful  load; 
it  is  killing  him.'  *Yes,  that  is  so;  he  is 
not  long  for  this  world!' 

159 


WHY  WE   LOVE  LINCOLN 

"Concentrated  in  that  one  great,  strong, 
yet  tender  face,  the  agony  of  the  Hfe  or  death 
struo'o-le  of  the  hour  was  revealed  as  we  had 
never  seen  it  before.  With  new  understand- 
ing we  knew  why  we  were  soldiers." 

A  month  later  came  the  dispatch  announc- 
ing the  slaughter  and  defeat  of  Chancellors- 
ville.     Noah  Brooks  read  it  to  Lincoln: 

*'The  appearance  of  the  President,  as  I 
read  aloud  these  fateful  words  was  piteous. 
Never,  as  long  as  I  knew  him,  did  he  seem 
to  be  so  broken  up,  so  dispirited,  and  so 
ghostlike.  Clasping  his  hands  behind  his 
back,  he  walked  up  and  down  the  room 
saying,  *My  God!  My  God!  Wliat  will 
the  country  say.^  What  will  the  country 
say.?'" 

Not  that  Lincoln  feared  criticism  or  even 
denunciation.  He  does  not  know  the  great- 
est and  noblest  American  who  thinks  that. 
No,  it  was  the  torturing,  intolerable  thought 
that  it  might  be  his  dreadful  fate  to  be  the 
last    President    of   the    United    States,    the 

160 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

haunting  idea  which,  a  generation  later, 
was  written  by  the  loyal,  iron-souled  Grant 
on  his  deathbed:  *' Anything  that  could  have 
prolonged  the  war  a  year  beyond  the  time 
that  it  did  finally  close  would  probably  have 
exhausted  the  North  to  such  an  extent  that 
they  might  then  have  abandoned  the  con- 
test and  agreed  to  a  separation." 

The  shedding  of  blood  grieved  Lincoln. 
Even  when  Grant  won  Vicksburg,  and  Lee's 
gallant  army  was  defeated  in  the  three  days' 
battle  at  Gettysburg,  his  joy  was  overcast 
by  the  thought  of  the  dead  and  dying  on  both 
sides.  All  through  the  bloodiest  days  of  the 
war  he  went  to  the  hospitals  in  Washington. 
His  heart  was  with  the  common  soldiers. 
And  he  was  tender  to  the  Confederate 
wounded.  He  never  could  forget  that  they 
were  his  countrymen.  Nor  could  he  with- 
stand an  appeal  to  pardon  a  young  soldier 
sentenced  to  death.  Again  and  again  he  left 
his  bed,  after  a  day  and  evening  of  exhaust- 
ing toil,   to  save  the  life   of  some  distant 

161 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

wretched  youth  condemned  to  die  at  day- 
break. 

Is  there  anything  in  the  whole  range  of 
EngHsh  Hterature  more  solemnly  beautiful 
and  heart-moving  than  the  note  he  wrote  to 
the  widow  Bixby,  of  Boston? 


«<- 


Dear  Madam:  I  have  been  shown  in 
the  files  of  the  War  Department  a  state- 
ment of  the  Adjutant- General  of  Massa- 
chusetts that  you  are  the  mother  of  five 
sons  who  have  died  gloriously  in  the  field  of 
battle.  I  feel  how  weak  and  fruitless  must 
be  any  words  of  mine  which  should  attempt 
to  beguile  you  from  the  grief  of  a  loss  so 
overwhelming.  But  I  cannot  refrain  from 
tendering  to  you  the  consolation  that  may 
be  found  in  the  thanks  of  the  republic  they 
died  to  save.  I  pray  that  our  Heavenly 
Father  may  assuage  the  anguish  of  your 
bereavement,  and  leave  you  only  the  cher- 
ished memory  of  the  loved  and  lost,  and 
the  solemn  pride  that  must  be  yours  to  have 

162 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

laid  so  costly  a  sacrifice  upon  the  altar  of 
freedom. 

Yours  very  sincerely  and  respectfully, 

A.  Lincoln." 

But  in  his  determination  to  save  the  Re- 
public no  horror  could  shake  his  resolution. 
It  is  no  small  part  of  his  title  to  the  love  of 
the  nation  to-day  that  one  so  merciful  and 
tender-hearted  could  suffer  the  frightful 
shocks  of  years  of  slaughter  and  waste  with- 
out wavering  from  his  duty. 

His  sense  of  nationality,  his  refusal  to  con- 
sider the  American  people  save  as  a  whole, 
was  expressed  in  that  immortal  speech  at 
the  dedication  of  the  cemetery  on  the  Get- 
tysburg battlefield  in  November,  1863. 

Edward  Everett,  who  was  looked  upon  as 
the  most  eloquent  of  living  Americans,  was 
the  orator  of  the  occasion.  The  invitation 
to  Lincoln  was  an  afterthought. 

Yet  who  can  remember  anything  of  the 
two  hours'  polished  speech  of  Everett,  and 

163 


WHY  WE  LOVE  LINCOLN 

who  can  forget  a  sentence  of  the  two  hun- 
dred and  sixty-five  words  which  Lincoln 
spoke  almost  before  his  hundred  thousand 
listeners  realized  the  dignity  and  imperisha- 
ble beauty  of  his  utterance? 

*' Fourscore  and  seven  years  ago  our  fath- 
ers brought  forth  upon  this  continent  a  new 
nation,  conceived  in  liberty,  and  dedicated 
to  the  proposition  that  all  men  are  created 
equal. 

Now  we  are  engaged  in  a  great  civil  war, 
testing  whether  that  nation,  or  any  nation,  so 
conceived  and  so  dedicated,  can  long  en- 
dure. We  are  met  on  a  great  battlefield  of 
that  war.  We  are  met  to  dedicate  a  portion 
of  it  as  the  final  resting  place  of  those  who 
here  gave  their  lives  that  that  nation  might 
live.  It  is  altogether  fitting  and  proper  that 
we  should  do  this. 

But,  in  a  larger  sense,  we  cannot  dedicate 
— we  cannot  consecrate — we  cannot  hallow 
this  ground.  The  brave  men  living  and 
dead  who  struggled  here  have  consecrated 

164 


WHY  WE  LOVE  LINCOLN 

it  far  above  our  power  to  add  or  detract. 
The  world  will  little  note,  nor  long  remem- 
ber, what  we  say  here,  but  it  can  never  for- 
get what  they  did  here.  It  is  for  us,  the 
living,  rather  to  be  dedicated  here  to  the 
unfinished  work  that  they  have  thus  far  so 
nobly  carried  on.  It  is  rather  for  us  to  be 
here  dedicated  to  the  great  task  remaining 
before  us — that  from  these  honored  dead 
we  take  increased  devotion  to  the  cause  for 
which  they  gave  the  last  full  measure  of 
devotion — that  we  here  highly  resolve  that 
these  dead  shall  not  have  died  in  vain;  that 
the  nation  shall,  under  God,  have  a  new 
birth  of  freedom,  and  that  government  of 
the  people,  by  the  people,  and  for  the  peo- 
ple shall  not  perish  from  the  earth." 

Even  after  that  Lincoln  offered  pardon 
to  every  one  who  would  return  to  the  old  alle- 
giance, save  the  leaders  of  the  rebellion.  His 
heart  cried  out  to  the  bleeding  South. 

Yet  his  head  was  steady,  and  when  he  put 
the  sword  of  the  nation  into  the  hands  of 

165 


WHY  WE  LOVE  LINCOLN 


Grant,  with  Sherman  and  Sheridan  to  help 
him;  when  the  army  swept  all  before  it, 
and  when,  after  reviewing  Grant's  forces  in 
front  of  grim  Petersburg,  Lincoln  called  for 
half  a  million  fresh  soldiers,  he  had  the  wit 
and  shrewdness  to  silence  Horace  Greeley's 
senseless  clamor  for  peace  negotiations  by 
writing  to  the  oflScious  editor: 

**If  you  can  find  any  person  anywhere 
professing  to  have  any  proposition  of  Jeffer- 
son Davis  in  writing,  for  peace,  embracing 
the  restoration  of  the  Union  and  abandon- 
ment of  slavery,  whatever  else  it  embraces, 
say  to  him  he  may  come  to  me  with  you; 
and  that  if  he  really  brings  such  proposition, 
he  shall  at  the  least  have  safe  conduct  with 
the  paper  (and  without  publicity  if  he 
chooses)  to  the  point  where  you  shall  have 
met  him.  The  same  if  there  be  two  or 
more  persons." 

After  his  second  election  to  the  Presidency, 
and  while  pressing  his  generals  on  to  the 
end,  Lincoln  continued  to  show  how  free 

166 


One  of  the  last  photographs  of  Lincohi.      Tlie  picture  shows 
plainly  the  cares  of  office 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

was  his  soul  from  bitterness  toward  the 
South.  The  dimax  came  in  his  second 
inaugural  speech,  when  a  miUion  soldiers 
were  executing  his  orders  in  the  field.  It 
was  the  last,  supreme  outpouring  of  his 
great  and  gentle  soul  before  peace  came  in 
the  surrender  at  Appomattox,  to  be  followed 
by  his  own  bloody  death  at  the  hands  of  a 
fanatic. 

Those  who  saw  him  on  the  day  of  his  sec- 
ond inauguration  say  that  he  was  thinner 
and  more  wrinkled  than  ever.  His  face  had 
a  ghastly,  gray  pallor.  There  was  an  ex- 
pression of  indescribable  mourning  in  his 
eyes.  After  speaking  for  some  time  to  the 
crowd  there  came  a  strangely  beautiful  look 
into  his  wasted  features  as  he  drew  himself 
to  his  full  height  and  raised  his  hands  high. 
Then  came  that  matchless  outburst  which 
is  repeated  by  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
American  schoolboys  every  year:    ■ 

"Fondly  do  we  hope — fervently  do  we 
pray — that  this  mighty  scourge  of  war  may 

167 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

speedily  pass  away.  Yet,  if  God  wills  that 
it  continue  until  all  the  wealth  piled  by  the 
bondsman's  two  hundred  and  fifty  years  of 
unrequited  toil  shall  be  sunk,  and  until  every 
drop  of  blood  drawn  with  the  lash  shall  be 
paid  by  another  drawn  with  the  sword,  as 
was  said  three  thousand  years  ago,  so  still 
it  must  be  said,  *The  judgments  of  the  Lord 
are  true  and  righteous  altogether.' 

With  malice  toward  none;  with  charity 
for  all;  with  firmness  in  the  right,  as  God 
gives  us  to  see  the  right,  let  us  strive  on  to 
finish  the  work  we  are  in;  to  bind  up  the 
nation's  wounds,  to  care  for  him  who  shall 
have  borne  the  battle,  and  for  his  widow, 
and  his  orphan — to  do  all  which  may 
achieve  and  cherish  a  just  and  lasting  peace 
among  ourselves,  and  with  all  nations." 

After  he  was  shot  by  John  Wilkes  Booth 
in  Ford's  theater  on  April  14,  1865,  Lincoln 
never  spoke  again.  He  had  seen  the  stars 
and  stripes  raised  in  Richmond.  He  had 
seen  the  end  of  human  slavery  on  the  Ameri- 

168 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 


can  continent.  The  nation  was  one  again. 
But  he  was  to  speak  no  death-bed  message. 
It  was  all  in  that  last  great  speech:  "With 
malice  toward  none;    with  charity  for  all." 

For  hours  they  stood  about  him  as  he  lay 
moaning  or  struggling  for  breath,  his  wife, 
his  Cabinet  officers,  his  pastor,  secretary  and 
doctors.  At  daybreak  the  troubled  look 
vanished  from  his  face.  There  was  abso- 
lute stillness,  followed  by  a  trembling  prayer 
by  the  pastor. 

*'Now  he  belongs  to  the  ages,"  said  the 
deep  voice  of  Secretary  Stanton. 


No,  while  Lincoln  lives  in  the  heart  of  the 
nation,  it  is  idle  to  think  that  the  Republic 
can  be  corrupt  or  cowardly. 

There  were  less  than  nine  millions  of 
Americans  when  he  was  born.  These  have 
become  almost  ninety  millions.  The  na- 
tional wealth  has  grown  to  more  than  a  hun- 
dred billions  of  dollars.     The  flag  he  de- 

169 


WHY  WE   LOVE   LINCOLN 

fended  now  flies  over  the  Philippines,  Ha- 
waii and  Porto  Rico.  The  law-resisting 
miUionaire,  the  "captain  of  industry"  and 
the  "tariff  baron"  have  taken  the  place  of 
the  slaveholder. 

Yet  the  love  of  Lincoln  deepens  with  in- 
creasing years ;  and  a  century  after  his  birth 
in  a  Kentucky  log  cabin,  and  nearly  forty- 
four  years  after  his  martyrdom,  the  Ameri- 
can people  answered  the  charge  that  they 
had  outlived  their  early  ideals  by  the  tribute 
they  paid  to  the  memory  of  their  humblest- 
born,  plainest,  most  beloved  leader  and 
President. 


170 


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